Old Assumptions, New Realities: Economic Security for Working Families in the 21st Century

A West Coast Poverty Center Conference, presented September 10-12, 2008

West Coast Poverty Center Conference Generates New Proposals on Economic Security for Working Families

With a rapidly changing global economy and an economic crisis in the headlines, researchers, policymakers and citizens have been asking how best to help American workers build and maintain economic security for themselves and their families.

In September, the West Coast Poverty Center (WCPC) and the Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy (NBEC) brought leading national policy scholars and prominent policy practitioners to the University of Washington to consider this question and to generate new policies that will promote economic security for today’s working families.

The conference, entitled "Old Assumptions, New Realities: Economic Security for Working Families in the 21st Century," was based on the recognition that the bulk of our current social, health, and employment benefit policy structures, created 70 years ago through the Social Security Act (SSA), no longer respond to today’s challenges and realities. The original provisions of the SSA did little to protect working-age adults and their children. Over the years, federal, state and local governments have addressed this and other gaps in the initial SSA provisions by developing a large and largely uncoordinated array of programs targeted to specific populations and needs - from health and nutritional assistance for low-income pregnant women to public and publicly subsidized housing, means-tested child care subsidies, public preschool services, specialized social and mental health services, employment preparation and vocational training programs, and many more. [Read the Conference Background Essay, "Old Assumptions, New Realities"]
View Professor Plotnick's slides introducing the conference theme: PDF

At the conference, prominent scholars, government officials, and representatives from the public and private sector engaged each other on cross-cutting issues that affect working-aged individuals and their families, and how the current patchwork of services can be brought up to date to meet their needs. The conference began with a public keynote presentation by Jacob Hacker, Professor of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley, on Working Families at Risk: The New Economic Insecurity and What Can Be Done About It. Conference panelists discussed the creation of new labor market opportunities, how to bridge the skills divide, asset-building for low-income families, economic security in the global context, the role of nonprofit organizations in service delivery, and new models and government roles in policy development for working families. [Jump to Conference Participant listing]

During each session, leading scholars presented analyses and proposals for new policy, with response and discussion from both academic and policy practitioner discussants. [Jump to Paper Sessions] WCPC scholars are now compiling the conference papers and commentaries into an edited volume. The Center will also disseminate the conference findings through a series of policy briefs for a wide audience.

The conference was organized by Marcia K. Meyers, Director of the West Coast Poverty Center and Professor of Social Work and Public Affairs; Steven Rathgeb Smith, Director of the Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy and Nancy Bell Evans Professor of Public Affairs; Robert Plotnick, Professor of Public Affairs; and Jennifer Romich, Assistant Professor of Social Work.

Core funding for the West Coast Poverty Center is provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. The conference also received generous support from the Seattle Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation.

PAPER SESSIONS:

Working Families at Risk: The New Economic Insecurity and What Can Be Done about It

Jacob HackerProfessor of Political Science, University of California Berkeley, and co-director of the forthcoming Center for Health, Economic, and Family Security at UC Berkeley.

View Professor Hacker's Address:

Creating Opportunity at the Bottom: The Role of Skill Development and Firm Level Policies in Improving Outcomes for Low Wage Employees

The bulk of public policy aimed at improving earnings focuses on the characteristics of individuals, i.e., improving either their human capital or the incentives that they face. This approach is certainly reasonable and should be encouraged, but it is incomplete. A substantial part of the problem is the quality of jobs that firms make available to low wage adults. Many of these jobs are inadequate on a number of dimensions and there is evidence that firms, under intense competitive pressure and in an environment of decreased regulation, are degrading employment even more. Paul Osterman reviewed policies that give firms subsidies and regulatory incentives to upgrade the quality of their employment and that combine these incentives with assistance in doing so. He surveyed the landscape of these various initiatives, reviewed our experience with them, and made recommendations for policy in the short- and longer- term.

Presenter: Paul Osterman, Professor of Human Resources and Management, MIT Sloan School of Management

Discussant: Barbara Reskin, S. Frank Miyamoto Professor of Sociology, University of Washington

Discussant: Kris Stadelman, Chief Executive Officer, Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County

The Skills Question and Public Policy: Addressing Changing Skill Requirements and Market Frictions through Workforce Development for Less Educated Workers

This session will address the argument advanced by many that changes in the kinds, locations, and skills of jobs have disproportionately harmed large segments of less-educated workers, whose investments in human capital accumulation have not kept pace with these changes. Michael A. Stoll evaluated old assumptions about the skills debate that have driven past policy efforts to advance human capital development through within- and out-of-school approaches, and assessed promising reforms to improve labor market success in light of new research insights about the challenges of less-educated workers.

Presenter: Michael A. Stoll, Chair, Department of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy and Urban Planning, UCLA

Discussant: Rucker Johnson, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

Discussant: Mary Jean Ryan, Director, Office of Policy and Management, City of Seattle

Asset Based Policies and Financial Services: Toward Fairness and Inclusion

Although income has been the standard measure of poverty and well-being, there is a growing body of evidence that asset holding, independent of income, also affects economic and social well-being of households and outcomes for children. With changes in the post-industrial economy, it seems likely that the role of assets in household well-being will continue to be important and may grow more important over time. Partly in response to the changes in economic conditions, social policy in recent decades has shifted toward asset accumulation. Today, asset-based policy is robust. But this policy operates on the tax side of fiscal policy and receives less attention than direct expenditures. Unfortunately, asset-based policy is enormously regressive; the poor receive almost none of these public benefits. Michael Sherraden addressed emerging proposals and policy tests to include the poor in asset-based policy in the form of progressive individual development accounts, child development accounts, and other inclusive strategies.

Paper: Asset Based Policies and Financial Services: Toward Fairness and Inclusion [pdf]

Presenter: Michael Sherraden, Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development, Washington University in St. Louis

Discussant: Marieka Klawitter, Associate Professor of Public Affairs, University of Washington

Discussant: Jennifer Romich, Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of Washington. Principal Investigator, Ethnographic Study of Seattle Asset Building Initiative

Ensuring that American Families Can Succeed at Home and at Work in a Global Economy

When the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, U.S. families organized their home and working lives in a society with far different social norms and market conditions from today's. Jody Heymann and Guilia El-Dardiry spoke to policies that help families achieve economic security and reconcile the demands of working and caring in the context of a competitive globalized economy.

Presenter: Jody Heymann, Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy, joint with Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University

Presenter: Giulia El-Dardiry, Research Assistant with the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University

Discussant: Anna Haley-Lock, Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of Washington

Discussant: Marilyn Watkins, Policy Director, Economic Opportunity Institute

Helping Hands for the Working Poor: The Role of Nonprofits in Today's Safety Net

The manner in which we provide safety net assistance to working age poor adults has changed dramatically in the past forty years. Several features of the “new” service-based safety net or welfare state have gone overlooked and many of our working assumptions about the safety net no longer hold. Once rooted in the federal government and cash assistance, the funding and delivery of social service programs is now fragmented across hundreds of different service programs, thousands of federal, state, and local agencies, and tens of thousands of local nonprofit organizations. Moreover, even though social services are often viewed as “person-based” assistance, poor people’s access to such services varies spatially because local governmental and nonprofit agencies are more likely to locate in certain areas than others. Scott W. Allard examined the re-emergence of secular and faith-based nonprofits in the American safety net and their implications for public policy. He examined the features of communities and nonprofits that best provide accessible and reliable services for the working poor; integration of secular and religious nonprofits into local safety nets; and federal, state, and local actions that might make social service programs more accessible to working poor populations.

Paper: Helping Hands for the Working Poor: The Role of Nonprofits in Today's Safety Net [pdf]

Presenter: Scott W. Allard, Associate Professor of School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago

Discussant: Steven R. Smith, Nancy Bell Evans Professor of Public Affairs, University of Washington, Director, Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy

Discussant: Jon Fine, President and Chief Executive, United Way of King County

Reconstituting the Safety Net: New Principles and Design Elements to Support Low-Income Workers

President Clinton’s welfare reform in 1995 fundamentally transformed the social welfare state. Faced with increasingly restrictive federal regulations and fiscal constraints, states now operate short-term, work-based, cash-assistance programs for small numbers of destitute families. Yet, at the same time, the differences between the haves and the have-nots in the United States are at unprecedented levels. Whereas the old model of social and income support had a public bureaucracy at the center, the tax system is now the most significant source of income transfer in the United States, and networks of nonprofits now provide many supports. New approaches must be built in relation to the policies, networks, and capacity which now exist. Jodi Sandfort drew upon system-design lessons from other policy arenas and innovative experiments to suggest viable new networks that can effectively support low-income citizens struggling to make ends meet.

Paper: Reconstituting the Safety Net: New Principles and Design Elements to Support Low-Income Workers [pdf]

Presenter: Jodi Sandfort, Associate Professor, HHH School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota

Discussant: Joaquin Herranz, Assistant Professor of Public Affairs, University of Washington

Discussant: Robin Arnold-Williams, Secretary, Washington State Department of Social and Health Services

Final Panel and Discussion: The Prospects and Politics of Policy Change

Adapting U.S. social policies to contemporary social, labor market and family realities, and the capacity of the public and nonprofit sectors, will require action at the federal, state and local levels. In the final conference session, experienced observers at each of these levels commented on the political, fiscal and institutional prospects for change.

Ajay Chaudry, Director, Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population, Urban Institute

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CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS:

Jacob Hacker

Jacob Hacker is Professor of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley and co-director of the forthcoming Center for Health, Economic, and Family Security at U.C. Berkeley. Dr. Hacker is a Fellow at the New America Foundation and a former Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. His recent books include The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream (2008); Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality (2007); and The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (2002).

Paul Osterman

Dr. Osterman is Professor of Human Resources and Management at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management. His research concerns changes in work organization within companies, career patterns and processes within firms, economic development, urban poverty, and public policy surrounding skills training and employment programs. He is the author of Working In America: A Blueprint for the New Labor Market (2001) and Securing Prosperity: The American Labor Market: How It Has Changed and What to Do About It (1999), as well as numerous academic journal articles and policy issue papers on labor market policy, the organization of work within firms, careers, job training programs, economic development, and anti-poverty programs.

Barbara Reskin

Barbara Reskin is Frank S. Miyamoto Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington and a Senior Faculty Affiliate of the West Coast Poverty Center. She has written numerous books and articles on gender and race inequality in the workplace, sex segregation, discrimination, and affirmative action. She is co-author of Nonstandard Work, Substandard Jobs: Flexible Work Arrangements in the U.S. She has served as an expert witness in employment discrimination litigation, and consulted with organizations on issues related to gender and work. Dr. Reskin has served on the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey and on several National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Committees. She is past President of the American Sociological Association.

Kris Stadelman

Kris has been Chief Executive Officer of the Seattle-King County Workforce Development Council (WDC) since its incorporation in July 2000. She came to the WDC with more than 20 years experience managing government and social service agencies, with a focus on employment, training, and self-sufficiency programs for the unemployed and economically disadvantaged.

Michael A. Stoll

Dr. Stoll is Professor and Chair of Public Policy in the School of Public Affairs at UCLA. His published work includes an examination of the labor market difficulties of less-skilled workers, in particular the role that racial residential segregation, job location patterns, job skill demands, employer discrimination, job competition, transportation and job information play in limiting employment opportunities. He is co-editor of Barriers to Reentry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-Industrial America ( 2007), co-author of Employers and Welfare Recipients: The Effects of Welfare Reform in the Workplace (2001), and author of Race, Space and Youth Labor Markets (1999).

Rucker Johnson

Rucker Johnson is Assistant Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the role of poverty and inequality in affecting life chances, including low-wage labor markets, spatial mismatch, the societal consequences of incarceration,and the socioeconomic determinants of health disparities over the life course. He is author of "Wage and Job Dynamics After Welfare Reform: The Importance of Job Skills" (2006) and "Landing a Job in Urrban Space: The Extent and Effects of Spatial Mismatch" (2006).

Mary Jean Ryan

Mary Jean Ryan is the Director of the City of Seattle’s Office of Policy and Management.Her office leads many of the City’s high-profile policy development and project management efforts such as the Mayor’s Children and Youth Strategy, Northgate revitalization, South Lake Union, University of Washington partnership, etc. Prior to that, she was Seattle’s Economic Development Director. Mary Jean has a deep interest in education and work force development. She currently serves on the Board of the Seattle Jobs Initiative and on the Seattle School District’s Community Advisory Committee for Investing in Educational Excellence. Mary Jean served in Washington, D.C., in the Clinton Administration as the Associate Deputy Administrator for Economic Development for the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Michael Sherraden

Dr. Sherraden is Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis. An internationally known expert in asset development and policy, he is co-author of Can the poor save? Savings and asset building in Individual Development Accounts (2007) and editor of Inclusion in the American Dream: Assets, poverty, and public policy (2005).

Marieka Klawitter

Marieka Klawitter is Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Washington and a faculty affiliate of the West Coast Poverty Center. Her research focuses on public policies that affect work and income, including studies of: the effects of child support policies, welfare policies, and anti-discrimination policies for sexual orientation. She is co-author of "Who Is Banked in Low Income Families? The Effects of Gender and Bargaining Power" (2008).

Jennifer Romich

Jennifer Romich is Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Washington and a Faculty Affiliate of the West Coast Poverty Center. She specializes in policy research on factors associated with low-income working families’ financial resources and basic research on time, labor and money within families with children . She is co-author of “Marginal Tax Rates Facing Low- and Moderate-Income Workers Who Participate in Means-Tested Transfer Programs.” She is currently Principal Investigator on an ethnographic study of the Seattle Asset Building Initiative.

Jody Heymann

Dr. Heymann is Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy, joint with Epidemiology and Biostatistics, at McGill University. Her research focuses on how social policy and social conditions impact health globally; poverty, income inequality and health; trade, labor conditions and health; and public policies and programs for vulnerable populations, with a particular focus on issues of poverty, inequality, and policy implementation. She is the author of "Forgotten Families: Ending the Growing Crisis Confronting Children and Working Parents in the Global Economy"

Giulia El-Dardiry

Giulia El-Dardiry is Research Assistant with the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University. She received a Masters of Health Science from the University of Toronto. She has a background in international cooperation and community health, and has worked in program management and community development with international and local NGOs.

Anna Haley-Lock

Anna Haley-Lock is Assistant Professor of Social Work and a Faculty Affiliate of the West Coast Poverty Center. She studies structures of opportunity and inequality in the workplace, program and human resource management in the nonprofit human services sector, and organizational theory and behavior. She is co-author of "Protecting vulnerable workers: How public policy and private employers shape the contemporary low-wage work experience."

Marilyn Watkins

Marilyn Watkins is Policy Director at the Economic Opportunity Institute in Seattle, Washington. She heads the Institute’s Work-Life Standards Initiative, which includes policy research and policy initiatives on paid family leave, minimum wage, and paid sick leave. She is author of "Rural Democracy: Family Farmers and Politics in Western Washington, 1890-1925" (1995) and several articles on the community basis of political reform movements. She has a Ph.D. in United States history from the University of Michigan.

Scott W. Allard

Dr. Allard is Associate Professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. An expert on social welfare policy, federalism and intergovernmental relationships, and urban policy, he is author of "Out of Place: The New Geography of Welfare Policy" (2008) and "Access to Social Services: The Changing Urban Geography of Poverty and Service Provision" (2004).

Steven Rathgeb Smith

Steven Smith is Nancy Bell Evans Professor of Public Affairs at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, and Director of the Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy. A faculty affiliate of the West Coast Poverty Center, he is an expert on nonprofit organizations, nonprofit and public management, public policy, comparative social policy, and social services. He is co-author of "Nonprofits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age of Contracting" and "Adjusting the Balance: Federal Policy and Victim Services", and co-editor of "Public Policy for Democracy". His recent publications examine government financing of nonprofit organizations, the role of faith-related service agencies in social welfare policy, and the government-nonprofit relationship in the US and abroad.

Jonathan Fine

Jon Fine is president and chief executive officer of United Way of King County (UWKC), the 4th largest local United Way in the country. He came to United Way from the Seattle/King County Chapter of the American Red Cross where he was chief executive officer. He has served on the Seattle City Planning Commission and as a board member of the Group Health Cooperative, the Group Health Foundation and Jewish Family Services. Among his other current civic affiliations, he serves on the board of the Washington Health Foundation, and on the advisory boards to the Puget Sound Blood Center, the University of Washington Nonprofit Management Program and Seattle Community Colleges. Fine has a master of business administration from the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Jodi Sandfort

Dr. Sandfort is Associate Professor at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. She is an expert on the implementation of social policy, particularly those policies designed to support low-income children and their families. She is author of many policy reports and research papers including co-author of "Collaborative Service Provision in the Public Sector," forthcoming in the Oxford University Handbook of Inter-Organizational Relations and "Do the Tools Used by Government Influence Organizational Performance? An Examination of Early Childhood Education Policy Implementation" (2008).

Joaquin Herranz

Joaquín Herranz is Assistant Professor of Public Affairs at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. His research focuses on strategic management of public and nonprofit agencies, inter-organizational networks, workforce development, as well as the intersections of community development and arts and culture. His current research includes studies for The Urban Institute, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, World Bank, and the International Labour Organization.

Robin Arnold-Williams

Robin Arnold-Williams is the state’s Secretary of the Department of Social and Health Services. With more than 25 years of experience in the human services area, Robin is a national leader in welfare reform and child welfare. Prior to taking up her current position, she served as the executive director of the Utah’s Department of Human Services in the administration of then-Governor Mike Leavitt, who is now head of the federal Department of Human and Health Services. In addition to her work in Utah, Robin also served as chair of the National Council of State Human Services Administrators (within the American Public Human Services Association) from 2001-2004.

Ajay Chaudry

Ajay Chaudry is Director of the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute. He previously served as deputy commissioner for child care and Head Start in New York City's Administration for Children's Services. He has consulted widely on the delivery of social services, health care, education, and other programs for young children and their families by government and nonprofits. Dr. Chaudry is the author of "Putting Children First: How Low-Wage Working Mothers Manage Child Care", a 2005 semi-finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award. He holds a doctorate and a master's degree in public policy from Harvard University and a B.A. in urban studies from Columbia University. He has held fellowships from Harvard's Malcolm Weiner Center for Social Policy and Kennedy School of Government.

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