Social Welfare Law Commons^™

Social Security Retirement Benefits Timing: A Model For Working Families, Francine J. Lipman, James E. Williamson

Scholarly Works

With more than 61 million individuals receiving Social Security benefits, one out of every four families in America receives monthly cash payments from the Social Security Administration (SSA). These monthly payments directly benefit 48.5 million retired workers, their current and former spouses, 10 million disabled adults, and include more than 3 million children. Several million more children and adults in the increasing number of multi-generational households in America benefit indirectly from Social Security retirement payments.

In addition to the broad reach of monthly Social Security retirement benefits these payments have ensured the financial well-being of millions of American families for …

(Anti)Poverty Measures Exposed, Francine J. Lipman

Scholarly Works

Few economic indicators have more salience and pervasive financial impact on everyday lives in the United States than poverty measures. Nevertheless, policymakers, researchers, advocates, and legislators generally do not understand the details of poverty measure mechanics. These detailed mechanics shape and reshape poverty measures and the too often uninformed responses and remedies. This Article will build a bridge from personal portraits of families living in poverty to the resource allocations that failed them by exposing the specific detailed mechanics underlying the Census Bureau’s official (OPM) and supplemental poverty measures (SPM). Too often, when we confront the problem of poverty, the …

Irresponsibly Taxing Irresponsibility: The Individual Tax Penalty Under The Affordable Care Act, Francine J. Lipman, James Owens

Scholarly Works

In recent decades, Congress has used the federal income tax system increasingly to administer and deliver social benefits. This transition is consistent with the evolution of the American welfare system into workfare over the last several decades. As more and more social welfare benefits are conditioned upon work, family composition, and means-tested by income levels, the income tax system where this data is already systematically aggregated, authenticated, and processed has become the go-to administrative agency.

Nevertheless, as the National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson has noted there are “substantial differences between benefits agencies and enforcement agencies in terms of culture, mindset, …

Medicaid At 50: No Longer Limited To The "Deserving" Poor?, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

Professor David Orentlicher considers the significance of the passage of the Affordable Care Act on the Medicaid program. He discusses the expansion of the program's recipients from merely children, pregnant women, single caretakers of children, and disabled persons to all persons up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Professor Orentlicher argues that the Medicaid expansion reflects concerns about the high costs of health care rather than an evolution in societal thinking about the "deserving" poor. As a result, the expansion may not provide a stable source of health care coverage for the expansion population.

Heal The Suffering Children: Fifty Years After The Declaration Of War On Poverty, Francine J. Lipman, Dawn Davis

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Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the War on Poverty. Since then, the federal tax code has been a fundamental tool in providing financial assistance to poor working families. Even today, however, thirty-two million children live in families that cannot support basic living expenses, and sixteen million of those live in extreme poverty. This Article navigates the confusing requirements of an array of child-related tax benefits including the dependency exemption deduction, head of household filing status, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child Tax Credit. Specifically, this Article explores how altering the definition of a qualifying child …

Access To Tax Injustice, Francine J. Lipman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Social Security Spouse And Survivor Benefits 101: Practical Primer Part Ii (Or Another Reason To Put A Ring On It), Francine J. Lipman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Commerical Speech Doctrine In Health Regulation: The Clash Between The Public Interest In A Robust First Amendment And The Public Interest In Effective Protection From Harm, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Chad J. Schatzle

Scholarly Works

Welfare's Forgotten Past: A Socio-Legal History of the Poor Law is a timely reminder of society's legal duty to the poor. In an era of global economic turmoil, with recent welfare reform and heated debates over the extension of unemployment benefits here in the United States, it is easy to forget that laws for the relief of poverty have roots reaching back more than 400 years. Author Lorie Charlesworth, Reader in Law and History at Liverpool John Moores University, focuses her book on the poor law-a historical, English system derived largely from the seventeenth-century laws of settlement and removal, which …

Social Security Benefits Formula 101: A Practical Primer, Francine J. Lipman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Supplementing Failure Under No Child Left Behind: How Both Left And Right Are Forcing Low-Income Children To Choose Between A Deficient Education And Working Overtime, Monica Teixeira De Sousa

Nevada Law Journal

This Article analyzes NCLB's Supplemental Educational Services provision and exposes its shortcomings. Part I introduces the voluntary overtime work approach of SES and highlights its flaws and limitations. Research reveals that the voluntary overtime work model is designed for the exceptional student and does not provide meaningful opportunities to the majority of students in under-performing schools. Part II presents the legal and political context in which policymakers created SES and shows how they failed to assess realistically the many challenges facing students today. In particular, the legislative history reveals that ideology--a blend of free-market and “pull yourself up by your …

The Fair Housing Act At Forty: Predatory Lending And The City As Plaintiff, Ngai Pindell

Scholarly Works

The availability of credit, to individual borrowers and to communities, is an integral factor shaping the geography of housing opportunity. Cities are shaped by the housing and borrowing choices of their residents and the attendant mobility -- or lack of mobility -- of families. When lenders deny credit to neighborhoods or borrowers because of race, communities suffer. And when lenders flood these same neighborhoods with subprime or predatory loan products, the communities suffer once again. The economic gains of individuals and of communities in cities over the last several decades are threatened by massive property devaluations, loss of equity, and …

Home Sweet Home? The Efficacy Of Rental Restrictions To Promote Neighborhood Stability, Ngai Pindell

Scholarly Works

Homeownership is an enduring and fundamental American tradition whose economic and social benefits are well examined and have received renewed attention in recent articles and books. Tax laws encourage homeownership; debtor-creditor and property laws protect homeowners; and constitutional protections defend homeowners from governmental attempts to exercise eminent domain.

The current economic and housing crises have forced commentators and policymakers to reexamine the connection between traditional conceptions of homeownership and economic stability, particularly for low-income residents. This article questions that traditional conception by exploring how local governments, in an effort to promote regulatory land use goals, frequently limit homeowners' power to …

Bearing Witness To Economic Injustices Of Undocumented Immigrant Families: A New Class Of "Undeserving" Poor, Francine J. Lipman

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"Bad" Mothers And Spanish-Speaking Caregivers, Annette R. Appell

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Shrinking Boomer Social Security Retirement Benefits, Francine J. Lipman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Logistical And Ethical Difficulties Of Informing Juveniles About The Collateral Consequences Of Adjudications, Michael Pinard

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Making Work Pay: Promoting Employment And Better Child Support Outcomes For Low-Income And Incarcerated Parents, Ann Cammett

Scholarly Works

The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice prepared this report in response to concerns about child support debt—in particular as it creates a barrier to employment for low-income parents and works at cross-purposes with the goals of the child support program. Drawing on examples from other states, this report identifies a range of policies that inform child support practice in New Jersey and offers administrative, legislative, and programmatic solutions to address child support arrears owed by low-income and incarcerated parents.

Community Economic Development Under Protest, Ngai Pindell

Scholarly Works

Storming Caesars Palace casts the War on Poverty in a new light to illustrate the "rich potential of a poor women's movement for economic justice." Orleck challenges "scholars and policymakers [to] rethink the conventional wisdom that the War on Poverty was a failure." Through "seeing and hearing from welfare mothers in all their complex, contradictory humanity," she hopes to unsettle existing ideas of effective anti-poverty strategies. Orleck is understandably troubled by the glacial pace of progress in the lives of poor people in America, concluding that "after a cacophonous, half-century debate about America's so-called underclass, few creative or genuinely new …

Is There Hope For Hope Vi?: Community Economic Development And Localism, Ngai Pindell

Scholarly Works

HOPE VI is a competitively funded, public housing redevelopment program with several competing goals. First, it seeks to revitalize deteriorated inner city communities. Second, the program attempts to transform dense, high-rise public housing that has housed the lowest income tenants into developments that are more integrated with surrounding communities in terms of architecture, economics, and aesthetics. Third, the program aspires to provide public housing residents opportunities for social and economic mobility through improvements in physical design and program offerings. The HOPE VI design encompasses demolishing existing "distressed" public housing developments, rebuilding these developments with fewer public housing units, and housing …

Uncharted Terrain: The Intersection Of Privatization And Welfare, Rebecca L. Scharf, Henry Freedman, Mary R. Mannix, Marc Cohan

Scholarly Works

Welfare, a mainstay of legal services practice, is cutting edge again. Clients need help negotiating a system that devolution, discretion, and privatization have changed radically. Public officials need help in this new environment to "get it right," so that programs achieve the laudable goals ascribed to them.

Privatization creates special challenges for welfare advocates. New players, ranging from neighborhood nonprofit organizations to churches to multinational corporations, are making decisions that affect clients' vital interests. New legal issues, ranging from state action to public contracting compliance, can arise. Accountability and transparency, difficult to achieve in the governance of traditional welfare programs, …

Child Care For Families Leaving Temporary Assistance For Needy Families, Rebecca L. Scharf, Sujatha Jagadeesh Branch, Cynthia Godsoe, Sherry Leiwant, Roslyn Powell, Cary Lacheen

Scholarly Works

Since Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program in 1996, the welfare rolls have decreased by more than 40 percent. While unemployment and poverty rates have declined, families who leave welfare generally earn low wages and remain below the poverty level. Because families leaving welfare are mostly single mothers with young children, child care is critical to their ability to work outside the home. Low-income parents trying to make ends meet, as well as employers of low-wage workers, emphasize the importance of appropriate, affordable child care in enabling women who leave welfare …

The Wages Of Welfare Reform: A Report On New York City's Job Centers, Rebecca L. Scharf, Barry Bassis, Lorraine Doran, Benjamin Dewitt Duke, Donald Friedman, Matthew Schneider

Scholarly Works

Waving the banner of welfare reform, President Clinton signed historic legislation in August 1996 abolishing poor families' federal entitlement to direct cash assistance and replacing it with a decentralized system of conditional block grants to the states. To qualify for these grants, most states—including New York—overhauled their own welfare systems and added rigorous new welfare-to-work requirements (the most prominent of which is frequently called "workfare"), as well as other programs which became conditions of eligibility for assistance. Not surprisingly, New York City, with one of the largest and most concentrated welfare populations in the United States, has become a crucible …

Child Care In The Postwelfare Reform Era: Analysis And Strategies For Advocates, Rebecca L. Scharf, Jo Ann C. Gong, Alice Bussiere, Jennifer Light, Marc Cohan, Sherry Leiwant

Scholarly Works

Adequate child care is essential to enable poor women to support their families with work outside the home. In 1994 the U.S. General Accounting Office found that offering a child care subsidy to poor mothers increased the likelihood by 15 percent that the mothers would work. An Illinois study found that 20 percent of parents who left public assistance for work returned to assistance because of child care problems. In Minnesota a study found that lack of child care caused 14 percent of parents awaiting child care subsidies to leave their jobs and rely on public assistance. These studies confirm …

God Bless The Child: Poor Children, Parens Patriae, And A State Obligation To Provide Assistance, Kay P. Kindred

Scholarly Works

In this Article, I argue that poor parents who are willing, but economically unable, to provide proper care for their children are entitled to some minimum level of state assistance grounded in the constitutional right to family integrity. The right to family integrity, when coupled with the state's power as parens patride, creates an affirmative obligation on the state to provide income assistance to impoverished families when necessary to protect the welfare of the children and maintain the family intact.

Aspirations And Reality In The Law And Politics Of Health Care Reform: Examining A Symposium On (E)Qual(Ity) Care For The Poor, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

Although the poor had suffered from insufficient health care for years, it was only when the middle class felt the economic pinch that health care reform moved to the top of the national agenda. In this way, the poor, a group with little political power, could benefit from the enormous political power of the middle class. In the Fall of 1992, it appeared that it was time for the poor to consider building a coalition with the middle class to work for universal coverage and improved quality of care. Yet, many questions remained about whether a coalition would benefit the …

Mandatory Non-Anonymous Testing Of Newborns For Hiv: Should It Ever Be Allowed?, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

In response to cries from both the public and the medical community for increased research and improved treatments with respect to pediatric AIDS, some state legislatures have attempted to enact legislation that would require routine mandatory testing of newborns for HIV on a non-anonymous basis.

Those who favor mandatory testing of newborns contend that such testing is necessary in order to protect the health of newborns and to ensure that the newborns' doctors provide them with adequate care. Moreover, testing advocates argue that because most hospitals already screen anonymously, failing to inform parents of the test results is inappropriate and …