Reimagining Behavioral Health: A New Vision for Whole-Family, Whole-Community Behavioral Health

by , , , , and | Jul 21, 2019 | Brief, Report

In this joint report with Mental Health America, we present a new approach to mental health and substance use care and treatment in the United States. The report introduces a whole-family, whole-community behavioral health approach: a vision of a society that adequately supports mental health, physical health, and social and financial well-being. The report offers leaders in the health care, educational, criminal justice, child welfare and other systems a united policy agenda to ultimately improve health and economic opportunity.

Fighting Poverty with Jobs: Projecting the Impacts of a National Subsidized Employment Program

by , , , , , and | Jun 12, 2019 | Report

Jobs are at the heart of our nation’s debates around poverty and economic security. In this joint report from the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality and the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, we find that a comprehensive subsidized employment program would reach millions of U.S. workers left behind in today’s economy, reducing the poverty rate among participants by nearly half.

Structurally Unsound: The Impact of Using Block Grants to Fund Economic Security Programs

by , , , , , , and | Feb 28, 2019 | Brief, Report

This analysis finds that block grants (characterized by capped amounts of federal funding to states and other entities paired with expansive flexibility for how the funds are spent) are fundamentally ill-equipped to support basic living standards compared to other structures, especially those that meaningfully guarantee access to adequate benefits or services. Specifically, block grants struggle to respond to need, can be less accountable to program goals and to the people who participate in the program, and can exacerbate inequities–especially racial inequities.

Unworkable & Unwise: Conditioning Access to Programs that Ensure a Basic Foundation for Families on Work Requirements

by , , , , , , and | Jan 31, 2019 | Brief, Fact Sheet, Working Paper

This working paper outlines the ramifications of taking away Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and housing assistance from those who do not document meeting new work and community engagement requirements. The paper underscores how proposals that take away basic assistance from people who don’t meet work requirements are ill-informed, ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable, while alternative policies would produce far better outcomes.

Bare Minimum: Why We Need to Raise Wages for America’s Lowest-Paid Families

by , , and | Apr 12, 2018 | Data & Workbooks, Fact Sheet, Report

This is a report on working people and their struggle to make a living when paid the federal minimum wage. The report makes a case for raising wages that is grounded in history, economics, movements across the country, and the lived experience of our nation’s lowest-paid working people, with a particular focus on eliminating the tipped minimum wage and the subminimum wage for working people with disabilities.