Cash assistance through unemployment insurance and TANF are critical supports for people with low incomes. Yet neither form of assistance is truly meeting the need in the pandemic.
The COVID-19 crisis has magnified the threats facing immigrants with low incomes, placing stress on families already challenged by the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement, public charge policies, and other extreme actions on communities of color and immigrants.
Researchers, advocates, policymakers, and government agencies all rely on data to improve the socioeconomic outcomes of working people. Without comprehensive measures, it becomes difficult to gauge the growing challenges facing historically marginalized populations like low-wage workers. Even some of our most reliable data sources have their shortcomings — limitations that could have lasting implications on real people and in most cases, some of the most disparate.
As the 2020-2021 academic year begins under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the many challenges colleges face is how to operate their federal and state work-study programs.
CLASP and the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program created a toolkit describing how to use media coverage and public disclosure to improve policy outcomes.
CLASP's youth and young adult mental health framework calls for policies that increase access to healing, transformative mental health supports for this population.
When the effects of historical and cultural trauma are transferred through generations it is called intergenerational trauma. This relates to mental health among indigenous people as a whole, because all of the atrocities our ancestors faced have an impact on us today and how our brains wired.
Immigrant families in New Jersey and nationwide have been excluded from critical COVID-19 relief. As New Jersey and the rest of the country continue to have social distancing restrictions in place, a response that excludes immigrants and their families will undermine public health and the economic recovery.
Public benefit programs are racist. They are also essential. It is critical that we understand the history of the safety net in the United States because, without recognition of past and present harm, we run the serious risk of complicity in upholding systems of white supremacy.