How Could Policies Change to Help Low-Income Families Succeed?
Gregory Acs and Margery Austin Turner, in their essay “Making Work Pay Enough: A Decent Standard of Living,” recommend policies to enhance low-income families’ purchasing power. To make housing costs more affordable, for instance, Acs and Turner propose a new refundable tax credit for renters and homeowners targeted at areas where housing is expensive, along with federal incentives to create more affordable housing. Cynthia Perry and Linda Blumberg’s “Making Work Pay II: Comprehensive Health Insurance for Low-Income Working Families” recommends universal health coverage with an individual mandate requiring everyone to get at least a minimum level of coverage. This system would include new state-designed purchasing pools and sliding-scale subsidies. Shelley Waters Boots, Jennifer Macomber, and Anna Danziger, in “Family Security: Supporting Parents’ Employment and Children’s Development,” complement these proposals by calling for greater investments in child care assistance, comprehensiv
