A Safety Net That Works: Improving Federal Programs for Low-income Americans

This is an edited volume reviewing the major means-tested social programs in the United States. Each author addresses a major program or area, reviewing each area’s successes and recommending how to address shortcomings through policy change. In general, our means-tested programs do many things well, but some adjustments to each could make the system much more effective. This book provides policymakers with a broad overview of the issues at hand in each program and how to address them.Contributions by Douglas J. Besharov, Richard V. Burkhauser, Douglass M. Call, James C. Capretta, Kevin C. Corinth, Maura Corrigan, Mary C. Daly, Robert Doar, Ron Haskins, Bruce D. Meyer, Edgar O. Olsen, Angela Rachidi, Katharine B. Stevens, and Russell Sykes.

Douglas J. Besharov is the Norman and Florence Brody Professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, where he teaches courses on poverty, welfare, children and families, policy analysis and logic models, program evaluation, and performance management. Richard V. Burkhauser is the Sarah Gibson Blanding Professor of Policy Analysis in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University and a senior research fellow at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Douglas M. Call is the deputy director of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy’s Program for International Policy Exchanges and its Welfare Reform Academy. James C. Capretta is a resident fellow and holds the Milton Friedman Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies health care, entitlement, and US budgetary policy, as well as global trends in aging, health, and retirement programs. Kevin C. Corinth is a research fellow in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on homelessness and poverty. Maura Corrigan is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she studies and evaluates programs related to child welfare, child support, food assistance, and disability. Mary C. Daly is senior vice president and associate director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, where she specializes in employment and wage dynamics, economic inequality and mobility, relative income and subjective well-being, disability and economic well-being, and disability policy in industrialized nations. Robert Doar is the Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies and evaluates how improved federal policies and programs can reduce poverty and provide opportunities for vulnerable Americans. Ron Haskins is a senior fellow and holds the Cabot Family Chair in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he codirects the Center on Children and Families. He is also a senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation and president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. Bruce D. Meyer is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on poverty, inequality, and social safety net programs. Concurrently, he is the McCormick Foundation Professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Edgar O. Olsen is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Virginia, where he served as chairman of the economics department and was heavily involved in the creation of its new public policy school. Angela Rachidi is a research fellow in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where she studies the effects of public policy and existing support programs on low-income families, continuing the work she did for the New York City Human Resources Administration for almost a decade. Katharine B. Stevens is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and leads AEI’s early childhood program. Her work focuses on the research, policy, and politics of early childhood care and education; the role of early learning in expanding opportunity for low-income Americans; and the implementation challenges of rapidly growing early childhood education initiatives. Russell Sykes directs the American Public Human Services Association’s Center for Employment and Economic Well-Being.