IRP Working Conference on
Pathways to Self-Sufficiency: Getting Ahead in an Era Beyond Welfare Reform

This working conference will bring together authors and discussants who have been commissioned to write and discuss chapters for a book to be published by the Russell Sage Foundation. The book will focus on strategies for helping low-income families achieve stable employment and financial security under current welfare policies. Carolyn Heinrich and John Karl Scholz will lead the conference and edit the volume.

The conference and chapters will focus on (1) the politics of the safety net and policy efforts to enhance self-sufficiency; (2) policy innovations and lessons from other countries in promoting self-sufficiency; (3) health issues facing low-income families and how problems of health care access (government- and employer-based) inhibit their self-sufficiency; (4) the formation of human capital, particularly among preschool children, and how work-oriented welfare policies affect investments in children and their longer-term outcomes; (5) policies to improve schools in high-poverty areas; (6) employment and employer-focused policies, including the minimum wage, tax credits, and subsidies directed at workers and/or employers; (7) crime and criminal rehabilitation policy, particularly given recent research showing incarceration rates exceeding employment rates of black males in some areas; and (8) the "deep" safety net, which will address supports needed for those who, for one reason or another, cannot meet the expectations and requirements included in a work-oriented system.

This working conference is being organized by Carolyn Heinrich, Thomas Kaplan, and John Karl Scholz, and cosponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.