Content by Keyword: Early Childhood and Child Welfare

Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study Conducted by Princeton University’s Center for Research on Child Wellbeing and Columbia University’s Social Indicators Survey Center Principal Investigators: Sara McLanahan, Irwin Garfinkel, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Christina Paxson

Table E-1. Demographic and background characteristics households at least 50 percent below poverty line   Stably       Significant Group Comparisons Stable At Risk Dbld Housed

* Direct all correspondence to: David Reingold, Associate Professor, Indiana University, School of Public & Environmental Affairs, 1315 E. 10 th Street, Rm. 410, Bloomington, Indiana 47405.  Reingold@indiana.edu. Biographical Statements

Axelson, Leland, J., and Dail, Paula, W. “The Changing Character of Homelessness in the United States,” Family Relations , Vol.37, No.4, 463-469, 1988. Bassuk, Ellen, L. et al.  “Homelessness in Female-Headed Families: Childhood and Adult Risk and Protective Factors,” American Journal of Public Health .  Vol. 87, No. 2, February 1997

Our analytic approach is designed to measure the multiplicity of individual and structural factors that may be associated with increased risk of becoming homeless, while also measuring those characteristics thought to protect families from this unfortunate hardship.  The design of the Fragile Families Study allows us to estimate these effects on

In order to expand our understanding of the current characteristics of homeless families, while comparing the importance of individual and structural factors that represent both proximate and distal risk and protective dimensions, we analyze data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study.  This new longitudinal birth-cohort sample of ap

This fragmentation in the literature has created a perception that many hypothesized correlates of family homelessness matter equally.   Whether it is domestic violence, drug use, weak labor force attachment, lack of informal social support, high housing costs, climate, the decline in the value of cash welfare benefits, etc., all have some empir

Typologies are ubiquitous in the social sciences.  They are frequently used to help provide clarity and improve understanding of a given population, situation, or pattern of social organization.  They are not designed to capture all subtle variation in a given context, but function as a heuristic device to provide theoretical clarity to help for

Scholarly research over the past twenty-five years has firmly established the emergence and persistence of family homelessness in the United States.   The homeless household – usually a mother and her children – represents a departure from the stereotypical image of skid-row residents (sometimes referred to as the “old homeless”) who are

This paper explores the characteristics and causes of homelessness among poor families with children.

1 The NSHAPC classifies “currently homeless” families as those who reported that, on the day of the survey or during the 7-day period prior to being interviewed, they stayed in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program; or a hotel or motel paid for by a shelter voucher; or an abandoned building, a place of business, a car or other

Burt, M., Laudan, Y.A., and Lee, E. (2001). Helping America’s homeless: Emergency shelter or affordable housing? Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Climaco, C., Finkel, M., Nolden, S., and Rich, K. (2004). Updating the Low Income Housing Tax Credit database: Projects placed in service through 2002. Cambridge, MA: Abt Associates, Inc.

The most important areas on which information is needed are how many homeless families need intensive ongoing supportive services to maintain stable housing and when those services need to be packaged with a housing subsidy or delivered on site. It is estimated that 22,000 families need permanent supportive housing based on some rough and ready de

A key distinction made in this chapter and one most relevant to any typology of homeless families is between families who need permanent mainstream housing and those who need permanent supportive housing. That distinction relates to the intensity of the service needs of parents leaving homelessness, whether those services are so essential to t

Federal Policies. The broadest implication of the information reviewed in this chapter and the implication most relevant at the Federal level is that there is a need for more funding for housing subsidies that follow the assisted housing model so that families trying to leave homelessness are not in direct competition with housed families with s

This section considers, first, which housing policies controlled at the Federal, state, and local levels would help provide mainstream subsidized rental housing for parents who have become homeless. Then, the implications of the information provided in this chapter for developing a typology of homeless families are discussed.

Housing assistance is not an entitlement, and there is a very large gap between the number of families who need subsidies for affordable rental housing and the number of available subsidies. This puts families attempting to leave homelessness for mainstream subsidized permanent housing in direct competition with families who are housed but who hav

In Exhibit 2 a very rough estimate was presented that there were 22,000 families with children who need to leave homelessness for permanent supportive housing at a point in time in 1996. This may be an overestimate of the number of permanent supportive housing units needed for families, as it may underestimate the ability of parents to live in mai