Unit 3:A New Social Contract

To round out our semester, here is a challenge. We've talked at length about families and social policies, and we're aware of how much burden families are under to raise children as citizens and workers. Phillip Longman and David Gray at the New American Foundation have released a short report, "A Family Based Social Contract," which argues that the US "creates more and more disincentives to invest in children, while also undercompensating parents and other caregivers..." One way to think about their argument is to picture a new approach that would shift expenditures in programs and policies (like Social Security) from families without children to families with children. They also mention new approaches to education, housing, and transportation that would ease the burden on families with children.

In the climate for change in Washington under the Obama administration, would this approach result in positive results for families? Would it attract support from both political parties? Why or why not? What are the downsides to such a proposal for a new approach to a social contract?

Unit 3: The Real Cost of Prisons

In class we discussed the implications of parental incarceration on families and children. A 2005 article in the New Orleans Times Picayune connects rising rates of child poverty in Louisiana to that state's high rate of incarceration. The Kids Count data books (which we used in class) have consistently rated child well-being in Louisiana as very poor, and not coincidentally, Lousiana also has the highest rates of incarceration of any state in the US - a rate that is double the national average at 797 people incarcerated per 100,000.

How do issues of race and class intersect with respect to this issue? How are children affected by the incarceration of a parent, in the short-term and the long-term? What are the implications for the future of families living in this part of the country? Think not just about the families that exist today, but the families that will exist in the next generation, the parents of which will be the children of today's families. What kinds of resources are lacking in Louisiana that have created a situation where this dynamic can exist? What are the relevant cultural and structural factors?

Unit 3: A Calculated Decision

We have spent a great deal of time this semester exploring the experiences of low-income couples, including unmarried mothers and fathers. Many current social policies are based on the assumption that marriage has financial consequences for poor families. But it all seems so complicated: what are the actual financial consequences if unmarried parents decide to get married, or perhaps just cohabit?

One website, administered by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, offers some insight into this question. The Marriage Calculator helps policy makers, researchers, and the general public to understand the financial consequences of marriage for individuals earning less than about $40,000 per year. Users can see how taxes and public assistance change when a couple's living arrangement changes from living apart to cohabiting to married.

Open the calculator and "create" information for a hypothetical single mother family and potential spouse. Then specify a set of transfer programs that the couple might use. The calculator will then display the financial impact of getting married; cohabiting that is either reported or not reported to government programs; and continuing to live apart. Write a response to your exercise. What was the most cost-effective solution for your hypothetical couple? Why do you think this is the case?