Access to high-quality child care, particularly for families with low incomes, has always been a challenge. The coronavirus pandemic has made it even more challenging.
This Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Asha Banerjee discusses the AAPI community's immense achievements in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and the systemic racism and hardship AAPI workers and families regularly face.
Unemployment has spiked to over 14 percent for March 2020, with most observers predicting a historic high of 20 percent. Without targeted job creation in communities hardest hit, today's crisis will have a lasting negative impact on workers of color and others.
It’s no surprise that families need money to afford basic necessities, especially during COVID-19. One way states can provide immediate help to children in families with low incomes is to create emergency assistance grants using unspent TANF funds.
During COVID-19, many state agencies that oversee basic needs programs have been forced to close their assistance offices. As a result, states have had to rethink many of their processes to handle the increase in applications while adhering to social distancing guidelines. When local benefit offices reopen, we must examine which changes during the COVID crisis have been beneficial and are worth keeping.
The recently created Pandemic EBT helps families put food on the table for students. But for many immigrant families who’ve been excluded from unemployment assistance and stimulus checks, states must intentionally target their P-EBT outreach to immigrant families to have successful outcomes.
During COVID-19, everyday people are suddenly confronting zero-hour work weeks, unemployment, food shortages, housing fears, and lack of access to health care. This is what people in poverty have been experiencing for years. My fear is that the people whose lives were already hard, will be the ones to fare the worst in this pandemic.
Due to systemic inequities in our health and economic systems, marginalized communities have experienced the most severe consequences from the COVID-19 pandemic. The climate crisis poses a similar threat to these communities with even greater implications.
This blog post presents 10 policy changes Congress should make in the next coronavirus pandemic stimulus bill to improve the fiscal stability of states and institutions of higher education, continue to provide much-needed emergency aid to students, and maintain college affordability.
