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August 2, 2008Making Work Pay Enough - Summary |
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From Urban Institute: One-third of America's families with children are low income, meaning their incomes fall below twice the federal poverty level. In this essay, Acs and Turner outline their proposals to enhance low-income families' purchasing power and reduce unusually high housing costs through a package of reforms and policy initiatives that tackle both the income side and expenditure side of family budgets. "Making work pay" should mean that working families can consistently afford the basics---housing, health care, food, and child care---and see real benefits to continuing and stepping up their work effort. Our approach rewards families for working more, raises their purchasing power, and cuts the cost of big-ticket necessities like housing, where costs are rising higher than wages. Low-income working families are supported by a complex web of public assistance programs and tax credits, including the earned income tax credit (EITC), child care subsidies, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Federal housing assistance serves about one in five low-income families that rent and virtually no lowincome homeowners. Half of all working households with incomes roughly between 100 and 200 percent of the federal poverty level spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income for housing; close to one-sixth spend more than 50 percent of their income.
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