Every day working families make choices between purchasing health insurance and paying the rent. They choose between paying the phone bills or finding a better -- but more expensive -- child care center. The Bridging the Gaps project examines the tough choices families must make in "bridging the gap" between their take-home pay and meeting their basic needs.
In this project, we want to know more about families struggling to bridge the gap between earnings and needs. We want to know what the reality is that families face and what is the role for policy.
We are curious to know how families cope on a day-to-day basis. We'll be talking to families around the country, as well as looking at national datasets that ask people about what public benefits they receive and the kinds of hardships they face. Do work and benefits combined enable families to afford a safe and decent standard of living? If not, what kind of "hardships gap" do families face?
We know that in many states, families do not receive all the benefits that they are eligible for, leaving them in the hardships gap. We want to know what the "effective coverage" of social policy really is--which families are eligible for assistance and how many of these families actually receive benefits? Families who are eligible for help, but don't get it are in what we call the "eligibility gap."
But even families who receive benefits can face an uphill battle when trying to move up the ladder into the middle class. Because benefits often phase-out very quickly as wages rise, a worker may double their earnings, but see little or no actual increase in their standard of living. Higher earnings may mean a family has to leave their subsidized apartment or shift to a non-subsidized child care provider, leading to much higher out-of-pocket costs and eating up any raises. We want to know more about how families make these choices.
"Devolution" means that the federal government has shifted much of the responsibility for social policy to the states. Yet, across states, families struggle to make ends meet. Since families face the same issues across states, what can we learn from the patchwork of state programs? What is the appropriate role for federal policy?
We want to know the answers to these questions because we think that policy can make a difference. We are working in states around the country to get answers -- and solutions -- to the pressing problems facing workers and their families. The Bridging the Gaps project will show what we can do to help families makes ends meet and bridge the gaps between earnings and needs.