Creative Anti-Poverty Initiatives
The strategy for greatly reducing poverty that the Community Advocates Public Policy Institute has chosen to pursue did not come out of thin air. Rather, the Institute’s strategy rests squarely on Milwaukee-based and other initiatives that provide evidence about what works.
Following are some of the creative initiatives that underpin the Institute’s approach and the evidence showing that these programs work and deserve to be “taken to scale” in order to provide all Milwaukee and Wisconsin residents with a clear pathway out of poverty.
The New Hope Project
A Milwaukee-based experiment that reduced poverty by offering low-income adults of all types (1) a guarantee of 30 hours of work per week in a transitional community service job if they could not find regular work, (2) a guarantee that if they worked 30 hours each week their earnings plus the EITC plus an additional supplement would lift them above the poverty line, (3) affordable childcare and (4) affordable health insurance.
The Canadian Self-Sufficiency Project
This full-scale demonstration project, which the Canadian government sponsored but private agencies operated outside the welfare system in British Columbia and New Brunswick, provided long-term single-parent welfare recipients who worked at least 30 hours per week with a substantial monthly earnings supplement for up to three years.
Early Childhood Education
A growing body of research on infants’ and young children’s brain development confirms that the quality of the early learning experiences sets the stage for children’s success in school and the years beyond. High-quality child care and preschool programs that intentionally focus on improving children’s health and academic performance help reduce poverty by preparing kids for success in school and in life. Research has also shown that affordable high-quality early learning programs help low-income parents work to escape poverty, and help their children not only academically but also through reduced delinquency and crime and increased employment and wages. For information on the economic benefits of investing in early childhood education, see the May 2008 report by the Rand Corporation on “What is the Payoff of Economic Research for Early Childhood Policy?”
