L&S News & Notes is a monthly blog and e-newsletter for faculty,
staff, graduate students and alumni and friends of the UW-Madison 
to expand. | Protecting the most vulnerable: UW teams up with state on child maltreatment prevention |
The recent release of a report on child maltreatment prevention is the product of a long-term collaboration between researchers and graduate students at UW-Madison.
The research team is a collaborative effort among UW–Madison Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) and the School of Social Work (SSW) with child welfare specialists at the Children's Trust Fund of the Wisconsin Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board, the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, and the State Department of Children and Families.
The report, What It Will Take: Investing in Wisconsin’s Future by Keeping Kids Safe Today, follows the fall 2009 release of Child Maltreatment Prevention: Toward an Evidence-Based Approach, which provides a review of the latest research on what approaches work best for children and families.
SSW doctoral student Katie Maguire Jack, lead author of What It Will Take, worked with Professor Kristen Shook Slack, SSW and IRP, and SSW graduate student Leah M. Gjertson on Child Maltreatment Prevention.
Slack notes, "Together, these reports along with a series of briefs on child maltreatment prevention on the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families Web site, should generate a lot of discussion about child maltreatment prevention efforts around the state and help local agencies to use their limited resources to the best effect for Wisconsin children and their families."
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| Plight of the poor and what can be done about it: New books analyze poverty, policy |
Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom of the Low-Wage Labor Market
A new book by UW Professor Jane Collins and Professor Victoria Mayer (Colby College), grounds an analysis of the forces that shaped the lives of working-poor families in the experiences of thirty-three women living in Milwaukee and Racine.
Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom of the Low-Wage Labor Market tells the story, often in women’s own words, of their struggle to balance child care and wage-earning in poorly paying and often state-funded jobs with inflexible schedules—and the moments when these jobs failed them and they turned to the state for additional aid.
Collins is UW–Madison Evjue-Bascom Professor of Women’s Studies and Community & Environmental Sociology, Chair of the Women's Studies Program, and IRP affiliate.
The authors of a new book about informing policymaking with research have devoted their careers to bridging the gap between the research and public policy communities.
Their argument—that research and policy ought to go hand-in-hand—has gained currency of late, and is seen by many as the only way to break the partisan gridlock that often paralyzes local, state, and national government.
UW-Madison Professors Karen Bogenschneider and Thomas Corbett have the rare perspective of scholars who have always had one foot in the public policy world, which they describe with wit and humor in their new book.
Bogenschneider is Rothermel-Bascom Professor of Human Ecology, professor of human development and family studies, research affiliate of the IRP at UW–Madison, family policy specialist at UW Extension, and executive director of the Policy Institute for Family Impact Seminars.
Corbett spent a number of years in a leadership role at the IRP and held an academic appointment in the School of Social Work (now Emeritus) at UW–Madison.
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| Mixing poverty research and mentoring of the next generation |
IRP's Summer Research Workshop, celebrating it's 20th year this summer, has become a time-honored tradition in the poverty studies community since the meeting’s establishment in 1990.
The four-day workshop held at UW–Madison each June brings together as many as 90 junior and senior scholars from a variety of disciplines, primarily Economics and Sociology, to discuss research related to the low-income population.
Designed to build a community of research interest around topics related to the poor and their labor market connections, the workshop focuses on frontier statistical methods for the empirical study of these issues and seeks to mentor the next generation of poverty researchers.
In celebration of the workshop’s 20th anniversary, this year's event features five keynote talks that are free and open to the public. A full schedule is available here.
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| Re-crunching the numbers: Supplemental Poverty Measure introduced |
The Census Bureau recently released a new, Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which will provide an alternative to (but not supplant) the official measure created in 1964 and considered outmoded and inaccurate by many experts.
The SPM takes into account both resources and expenses excluded from the official measure, such as tax credits and child care expenses.
And it is a work in progress that incorporates the combined wisdom of decades of analysis and which will be refined as needed with input from many experts, including those at the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP).
Over the years, IRP has helped inform major efforts to improve the official measure that ultimately guided development of the SPM.
In the early 1990s, IRP affiliates helped develop National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommendations, which remain the gold standard, and, a decade later, IRP researchers served on the Committee on National Statistics that updated NAS’s plan.
Most recently, IRP Director Timothy Smeeding co-organized with the Census Bureau and Brookings Institution a May 6, 2010, gathering of experts in Washington to evaluate the new SPM. The first alternative statistics will be published in fall 2011, alongside the official data, the latter of which will still be used for determining government program eligibility.
- Supplemental Poverty Measure Census Bureau observations [pdf]
- Joint paper on Supplemental Poverty Measure by Haskins, Moskowitz, and Smeeding
- IRP/Census/Brookings event: Evaluating the Supplemental Poverty Rate Proposal, transcript and audio
- FAQ: How is poverty measured in the United States?
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| IRP to host seminars focusing on globalization in the Midwest, transmission of inequality |
The Institute for Research on Poverty welcomes two important figures to UW0Madison to present seminars on May 4 and May 13.
On May 4, scholar, journalist and author Richard Longworth will describe how globalization has gutted Midwestern industries and way of life and plot a strategy for recovery during a seminar, 'Caught in the Middle.'
Longworth, senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a former Chicago Tribune correspondent and author of Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism, will discuss how his arguments would affect the poor. The seminar will be held 4:00-5:30 pm in the Pyle Center’s Alumni Lounge.
Donald Nichols, Longworth’s
respondent, is professor emeritus of public affairs and economics at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison, and longtime modeler of the Wisconsin
economy.
On May 13, 4:00-5:30 pm, economist Richard Blundell will examine how changes in income inequality affect changes in consumption (spending) inequality and what this tells us about the transmission of inequality.
Blundell, professor of economics at University College London and research director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies will examine 'From Income to Consumption: Understanding the Transmission of Inequality' in the Fluno Center’s Howard Auditorium.
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| IRP named new USDA National Food Assistance Research hub |
The Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service named the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) the UW–Madison as the RIDGE Center for National Food and Nutrition Assistance Research following a nationwide competition.
As the new RIDGE (Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics) Center, IRP serves as a national hub for sponsoring new, innovative research related to such programs as the food stamp and school lunch programs and as a center for training and mentoring scholars.
ERS also established a second research hub, for targeted studies, at the Southern Rural Development Center, Mississippi State University.
The announcement of the two new centers came as food stamp use has increased sharply as the severe economic recession continues.
Nearly one in eight Americans and one in four children received food stamps in October 2009, up 22 percent from a year earlier. In 2010 it is estimated that $60 billion will be spent on this program alone.
Judith Bartfeld—food insecurity researcher, professor in the UW–Madison Department of Consumer Science, specialist with Cooperative Extension, and IRP affiliate—serves as center director. Bartfeld notes, "Food assistance programs are taking on a phenomenally important role as a safety net, and center research will inform policymaking in this area."
- Institute for Research on Poverty selected as national research hub (University Communications)
- UW-Madison poverty institute chosen for new nutrition research center (Wisconsin State Journal)
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| Noted economist gives federal antipoverty policies a B+ |
Economists agree that the current recession ranks with the worst economic crises since World War II, and that it is taking a terrible toll on most Americans.
But analysts disagree about the
effectiveness of recent federal efforts to mitigate the recession’s
effects, especially for the most vulnerable individuals and families.
In a new research brief,
Brookings Institution economist and Institute for Research on Poverty
affiliate Gary Burtless presents his report card for antipoverty
initiatives of the Obama Administration and Congress, such as the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; and the Worker, Home Ownership,
and Business Assistance Act.
Burtless notes that a majority of
respondents tell pollsters they think the stimulus package has either
made no difference to the economy or has actually made things worse,
and he argues that this assessment is wrong.
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