This video explains how income instability affects families’ everyday lives. It highlights opportunities for policymakers and program administrators to promote greater income stability and mobility through income support programs.
Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Consortium
To fill gaps in family self-sufficiency research, stability research, and data activities, and to complement its ongoing research, the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and Families launched a multidisciplinary Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Consortium (known as the consortium) in 2013, funded for five years (through 2018). The consortium’s mission was “to improve the lives of low-income families and children through better policies and practices by integrating research, policy, and practice on family self-sufficiency and stability; by engaging federal, state, and local actors in meaningful conversations and supporting them to be better producers and users of data; and by doing path-breaking, rigorous, and relevant research on contemporary questions related to family self-sufficiency and stability.” The consortium consisted of three parts: (1) the Advancing Welfare and Family Self-Sufficiency Research project, led by Mathematica Policy Research; (2) the Scholars Network, a multidisciplinary collaborative of seven university-based scholars; and (3) the Data Center, which provided technical support to states on high quality data management, linkage, and analysis.
These publications have been produced by members of the consortium and are solely the responsibility of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or Mathematica Policy Research.
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Researchers Speak: Insights about Family Stability and Self-Sufficiency, A Viewer's Guide
This is a viewer’s guide to four videos produced by researchers in the Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Consortium on reducing poverty and increasing family stability in the United States.
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Place and Poverty in the United States
This video explains how poverty has moved from rural and urban areas into suburban locales, where poverty problems are more acute.
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Material Hardship and the Safety Net
This video discusses research on material hardship, which is the inability of households to meet basic needs and essential expenses.
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Engaging Dads in Family Programs
This video describes efforts to promote engagement with fathers or father-figures in parenting programs.
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Improving Services by Redesign
This video describes how the Future Services Institute is using principles like human-centered design, information technology, and real-time research, like rapid-cycle evaluation, to help refashion public institutions to evolve, deliver effective services, and support innovation.
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Finding a Way: How Income Instability Affects Low-Income Families
This video explains how income instability affects families’ everyday lives. It highlights opportunities for policymakers and program administrators to promote greater income stability and mobility through income support programs.
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The Consortium: 2017 Year in Review
This brief highlights the Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Consortium’s individual and collective efforts in 2017 to improve the lives of low-income families and children by integrating research, policy, and practice on family self-sufficiency and stability.
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The Changing Composition of Minnesota's Social Safety Net
This research brief uses data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Study (CPS) to describe trends in the demographic and economic characteristics of social safety net recipients in Minnesota.
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Family Self-Sufficiency Data Center Creating a Data Model to Analyze TANF Caseloads
The Family Self-Sufficiency Data Center releases a new brief describing a model for using TANF data to understand caseload dynamics and address key policy questions.
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Income Instability and Income Support Programs: Recommendations for Policy and Practice
This brief presents background on income volatility and income support programs before making recommendations for policymakers and program administrators to promote income stability and mobility with income support programs.
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The Great Recession and the Rise in Material Hardship
New research examining material hardship and sources of economic and family instability provides insight into how the Great Recession impacted households and, going forward, what might help those finding it hard to make ends meet.
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The Consortium: 2016 Year in Review
This brief highlights the Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Consortium’s individual and collective efforts to improve the lives of low-income families and children by integrating research, policy, and practice on family self-sufficiency and stability.
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The Consortium: 2015 Year in Review
This brief highlights the Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Consortium’s efforts to make meaningful contributions to the field in 2015.
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Changing Demography of Social Safety Net Programs
This report highlights the changing socio-demographic composition of program participants for AFDC/TANF, SNAP and SSI between 1988 and 2015 and discusses the importance of addressing the needs of program participants from diverse backgrounds.
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"Not Very Many Options for the People Who Are Working Here:" Rural Housing Challenges Through the Lens of Two New England Communities
This brief uses interview and focus group data to describe some of the ways that restricted rural housing stock affects working families in two rural New England counties, and explores solutions proposed by rural residents and experts to make housing affordable.
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Families on a Fault Line? The Risk of Poverty When a Child Joins the Home
This brief describes our use of an official poverty measure (OPM) framework to simulate who is most at risk of falling into poverty through the birth, adoption, or fostering of a child.