by Isabella Camacho-Craft and Sophie Khan | Aug 5, 2021 | Brief
High-quality caregiving, including child care and long-term services and supports, is essential but out of reach for too many families. At the same time, care workers—who are disproportionately women of color—face poor job quality, low pay, and inadequate benefits, which undermines access to quality care. This brief offers recommendations for caregiving investments that promote the well-being of children, older adults, people with disabilities, and their families by creating and sustaining good jobs in the caregiving sector.
by Jae June Lee, Sheila Naughton and Cara Brumfield | May 26, 2021 | Brief
Census data are essential to equitable distribution of political power and federal resources for programs that support economic security, health, education, and more. In the years between each census, the Census Bureau produces annually-updated estimates of the nation’s population using the most recent census count as a starting point. To improve the quality of these updated population estimates, the bureau provides Tribal, state, and local governments with opportunities to identify and address a limited range of mistakes. These opportunities include the Count Question Resolution (CQR) and Population Estimates Challenge (Challenge) programs. This brief provides a clear description of these programs (and their limitations) to help stakeholders understand and engage in these opportunities to pursue more accurate population estimates.
by GCPI | Mar 30, 2021 | Brief
The COVID-19 pandemic and recession have greatly magnified existing health and economic inequities, threatening the well-being of children and families. Children, families, and communities throughout the United States urgently need bold, equitable, and anti-racist human services to meet the extraordinary challenges facing our country. This brief summarizes the key recommendations from a GCPI research project identifying, developing, and prioritizing human services-focused federal executive actions to improve economic security and well-being for children and families in the U.S.
by Cassidy Viser, Isabella Camacho-Craft, Kali Grant and Indi Dutta-Gupta | Feb 3, 2021 | Brief, Data & Workbooks
The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the growing need for child care, paid leave, and unemployment assistance, but many state and federal unemployment assistance and paid leave programs fail to account for the child care needs of working families. This project chronicles and analyzes state-by-state policies on the availability of wage replacements for workers without child care. The table lists policies on the availability of unemployment assistance and paid leave by state, including D.C. and territories, including definitions of school “closures” for regular and pandemic unemployment assistance eligibility, work search requirements, and working documentation of state paid leave programs.
by Chris Geary, Jeanna Capito and Jessica Duggan | Sep 4, 2020 | Brief
Before the COVID-19 crisis, home visiting programs provided essential services to help support pregnant people and parents of young children, strengthen parent-child interactions, promote healthy child development, and facilitate stable family systems. During the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession, many families face new and increased needs that home visitors can work to address. This brief, published jointly with the Rapid Response Virtual Home Visiting collaborative provides an overview of home visiting programs, shares their successes in pivoting to virtual service models, and explains their need for increased federal funding.
by Sheila Naughton, Kali Grant, Michael Evangelist and Patrick Cooney | Aug 7, 2020 | Brief
COVID-19 response legislation greatly strengthened and expanded the dollar amount, duration, and coverage of unemployment assistance. These changes have prompted questions about the implications for workers receiving disability benefits. This brief discusses the interaction between disability benefits and unemployment assistance and clarifies benefits that unemployed workers can receive through pandemic-related unemployment assistance. It is published jointly with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, The Arc, Association of University Centers on Disabilities, The Century Foundation, and The National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities.
by Chris Geary, Vincent Palacios and Laura Tatum | Jul 20, 2020 | Brief
Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, essential workers have supported the well-being of our communities and the economy, but inconsistencies in federal, state, and local essential worker policies have limited some workers’ access to paid sick days, greater compensation, and other benefits. This brief, published jointly with the Workers’ Rights Institute, provides an inclusive definition of essential workers, and finds that women, people of color, and immigrants are over-represented in the essential workforce and face increased risks related to COVID-19.
by GCPI | May 15, 2020 | Brief
As unemployment soars, a substantial share of unemployed jobseekers—including new entrants, such as many students completing school—are excluded from the regular Unemployment Insurance (UI) system and new emergency unemployment programs. This brief argues that a Jobseeker’s Allowance could fill gaps in the UI system and help workers, families, and the economy by providing cash and employment supports for jobseekers left out of UI. The brief is jointly published with Employ America, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Women’s Law Center, the National Employment Law Project, and the Century Foundation.
by Ethan Winter | May 13, 2020 | Brief
Automatic stabilizers—policies that make public spending responsive to economic conditions—boost our economy by reducing income losses and supporting consumer spending. This memo, published jointly with Data for Progress and the Groundwork Collaborative, analyzes new polling data on automatic stabilizers. By a two-to-one margin, voters support Congress implementing policies to automatically increase social spending during periods of increased unemployment.
by Cara Brumfield and Sophie Khan | May 6, 2020 | Brief
Child care providers have been hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis and are facing tough decisions about how to do what’s best for the families they serve, their own families, their workers, and their businesses. This fact sheet, published jointly with the National Women’s Law Center, outlines financial supports available to help cover providers’ business expenses and to help workers who face layoffs or reduced hours.
