Public Policy Commons^™

My Experience With Resilience Alliance In Ohio, Heather Murphy

Other QIC-WD Products

I am a caseworker at Summit County Children Services. I have been doing this work for 12 years and am currently part of the Family Preservation Unit. Our intent is to work with families on a voluntary, short-term, intensive basis. Our main goal is to ensure child safety while providing the family with services that can improve stability and enhance their overall functioning. My unit was developed in May 2018 to work with families on a voluntarily basis. Family Preservation consists of seven direct staff workers and one supervisor. Our unit is very supportive of one another and relies on …

Job Involvement, Megan Paul

Umbrella Summaries

What is job involvement?

Job involvement refers to an individual’s psychological identification with their job (Kanungo, 1982). The preferred measure is the 10-item Job Involvement Questionnaire, which includes questions such as, “Most of my interests are centered around my job,” “I consider my job to be very central to my existence,” and “Most of my personal life goals are job oriented” (Kanungo, 1982).

Why is job involvement important?

Job involvement is important because it is associated with several important work outcomes. Specifically, it is strongly related to job satisfaction (Brown, 1996), organizational commitment, and career commitment (Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005). …

Covid 19: Unemployment Claims In The Mountain West, Katie M. Gilbertson, Madison Frazee-Bench, Marie A. Falcone, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

The purpose of this fact sheet is to highlight the impact of the COVID-19 health crisis on unemployment claims in the Mountain West region. This fact sheet presents data gathered from Opportunity Insights and provides unemployment claims data for five Mountain West states (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah) as of May 9, 2020.

Employee Financial Wellness Programs: Tips For Employers, Sloane Wolter, Jenna Hampton Bsw, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Ellen Frank-Miller

Social Policy Institute Research

There are several types of Employee Financial Wellness Programs (EFWPs), such as workplace financial counseling, workplace credit building, and employer-sponsored small dollar loans. Each program benefits the company and its employees in different ways.

The Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, with generous support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, studied the implementation of EFWPs at several diverse organizations, including a nonprofit in the Midwest and several supply chain locations of a national retailer, to understand the impact. As a result, we’ve identified four ways in which organizations can maximize the benefits of EFWPs and avoid pitfalls …

Online Grocery Shopping By Nyc Public Housing Residents Using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) Benefits: A Service Ecosystems Perspective, Nevin Cohen, Katherine Tomaino-Fraser, Chloe Arnow, Michelle Mulcahy, Christophe Hille

Publications and Research

This paper examines adoption of online grocery shopping, and potential cost and time savings compared to brick and mortar food retailers, by New York City public housing residents using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. A mixed methods action research project involving the co-creation of an online shopping club, the Farragut Food Club (FFC), recruited 300 members who registered to shop online using SNAP, and received waivers on delivery minimums and provided technical assistance and centralized food delivery. We conducted a survey (n = 206) and focus groups to understand shopping practices; FFC members collected receipts of groceries over two …

Tax-Time Saving And The Earned Income Tax Credit: Results From Online Field And Survey Experiments, Mathieu Despard, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Stephen Roll, Bradley Hardy, Dana Perantie, Jane Oliphant

Social Policy Institute Research

Tax refunds are an opportunity for Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) recipients to build emergency savings. Randomly assigned behavioral interventions in 2015 and 2016 have statistically significant impacts on refund saving take-up and amounts among EITC recipients who filed their taxes online. From a survey experiment, we also find that EITC recipients have a 49 percent and 59 percent increased likelihood of deferring 20 percent of their refunds for six months when hypothetically offered 25 and 50 percent savings matches (p < .001), respectively. These findings can inform policy development related to encouraging emergency saving at tax time.

Employee Financial Wellness Programs: Promising New Benefit For Frontline Workers?, Mathieu Despard, Ellen Frank-Miller, Yingying Zeng, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Geraldine Germain, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Meredith Covington

Social Policy Institute Research

Interest among employers is growing in Employee financial wellness programs (EFWPs), a new type of benefit to address financial stress among employees. EFWPs benefits include financial counseling, small-dollar loans, and savings programs that address employees' non-retirement financial needs. Little evidence exists concerning the availability and use of and outcomes associated with EFWPs, especially among low- and moderate-income (LMI) workers who may be in greatest need of these benefits. We present findings concerning awareness and use of EFWPs from a national survey of LMI workers (N=16,650). Availability of different EFWP benefits ranged from 11 to 15% and over a third of …

The Impact Of Tax Refund Delays On The Experience Of Hardship And Unsecured Debt, Olga Kondratjeva, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) provides substantial financial support to low-income workers, yet around a quarter of EITC payments are estimated to be erroneous or fraudulent. Beginning in 2017, the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 requires the Internal Revenue Service to spend additional time processing early EITC claims, delaying the issuance of tax refunds. Leveraging unique data, we investigate how delayed tax refunds affected the experience of hardship and unsecured debt among EITC recipients. We find that early filers experienced increased food insecurity relative to later filers after the implementation of the refund delay.

Financial Counseling For Front-Line Workers: A Pilot Study Of Engagement And Outcomes, Mathieu Despard, Yingying Zeng, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Ellen Frank-Miller, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

Although financial counseling has been studied in community-based settings, programs offered in the workplace are understudied and yet may aid low- to moderate income employees in improving their financial situations. This study examines workers’ engagement in and associated credit outcomes from an employer-based financial counseling program in the New York City area. Findings suggest that participants engaged equally in services except for older and non-English speaking workers, who had lower levels of digital engagement. In-person engagement in services was minimal. Credit score improvements were modest, but greater for workers who had

scores in the lowest quartile at baseline. These credit …

Promoting Public Retirement Savings Accounts During Tax Filing: Evidence From A Field Experiment, Stephen Roll, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Olga Kondratjeva, Sam Bufe

Social Policy Institute Research

Many U.S. households—especially those with low- to moderate-incomes (LMI)—struggle to save for retirement. To address this issue, the Department of the Treasury launched myRA, a no-fee retirement account designed primarily to help people who lacked access to employer-sponsored plans build retirement savings. In this paper, we report findings from two myRA-focused field experiments, both of which were administered to well over 100,000 LMI online tax filers before and during the 2016 tax season. The first experiment involved sending one of three different myRA-focused email messages to tax filers immediately prior to tax season, and the second experiment …

Employee Financial Wellness Programs: Tips For Providers, Jenna Hampton Bsw, Sloane Wolter, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Ellen Frank-Miller

Social Policy Institute Research

There are several types of Employee Financial Wellness Programs (EFWPs), such as workplace financial counseling, workplace credit building, and employer-sponsored small dollar loans. Each program benefits the company and its employees in different ways.

The Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, with generous support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, studied the implementation of EFWPs at several diverse organizations, including a nonprofit in the Midwest and several supply chain locations of a national retailer, to understand the impact. As a result, we’ve identified five ways in which providers can maximize the benefits of EFWPs and avoid pitfalls …

Using Financial Tips To Guide Debt Repayment: Experimental Evidence From Low-And Moderate-Income Tax Filers, Olga Kondratjeva, Stephen Roll, Sam Bufe, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

Much of the literature on household finances tends to focus on discrete or relatively objective measures like savings, debt, economic mobility, and there has been a lack of research on holistic measures of financial well-being. This gap is due in part to the absence of a common understanding of how to define and measure financial well-being; a gap that was recently addressed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s development of a financial well-being scale. However, the research on this scale is still scarce and little is known about how financial well-being evolves over time. To that end, this paper uses …

Homelessness In The Mountain West, Yanneli Llamas, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This Fact Sheet provides data on homelessness in the five Mountain West states: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. This information is adapted from the original U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness data, as reported in the Psy.D. Programs’ article, “The Places with the Most (and Least) Homelessness in America."

Covid-19: The Impact On Young, Low-Wage Workers Without College Degrees, Marie A. Falcone, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This Fact Sheet highlights select data from the Brookings Institution report “We can’t recover from coronavirus recession without helping young workers” released May 7, 2020 by Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman. In the context of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the report includes data on the long-term, near-term, and immediate-term risk for occupations held by young workers without college credentials. This Fact Sheet focuses on data pertaining to the employment demography of young workers without a college degree in Mountain West states (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah).

A Failure Of Laïcité: Analyzing The Ongoing Discrimination Of French-Muslims In The 21st Century, Lauren Degener

International ResearchScape Journal

The question of how to deal with the “Muslim problem” has once again arisen in France, opening old wounds of colonization and cultural racism. France’s rich Christian past and the historical context of the French-Algerian conflict are key players in the modern suffering of Muslims in French Society. Its colonization of Africa included nations such as Morocco, Indochina, Madagascar and notably in this context, Algeria in 1830. In their valiant fight for independence, the National Liberation Front was launched by Algerians and resulted in a bloody struggle that still haunts the Muslim-French relations in modern France. Though Algeria achieved its …

Reflective Writing In Prisons: Rehabilitation And The Power Of Stories And Connections, Sandeep Kumar

VA Engage Journal

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Even though the rate of crime is dropping, incarceration rates remain fairly steady. What’s more, recidivism (i.e., re-offending after conviction for other crimes) is also very high in the US. If offenders continue to offend, even after completing their sentences in a correctional system designed to address their underlying criminal activity, what is the point of having such a system? Can the system be made more accountable and better? Have we considered all the options for criminal reform? This article explores these questions using effective rehabilitation principles to …

The Role Of Strategic Governance In Reducing Infant Mortality Under Crisis Conditions, Lynn Christine Finley

Dissertations and Theses

The infant mortality rate (IMR) in some developing countries has decreased faster than the global average even though these countries lack strong economic growth, good governance, and democracy (often acknowledged precursors to improved health outcomes). What accounts for the improvement of the IMR in the absence of these traditional pathways to health gains? Some scholars suggest that the concept of "strategic governance" might help direct attention to intermediary factors that reduce neonatal deaths in countries that experience crisis conditions. The main objective of this dissertation is to investigate the set of governance practices that have reduced IMR in two such …

Psychological Capital, Megan Paul

Umbrella Summaries

What is psychological capital?

Psychological capital (PsyCap) is a composite of four positive psychological resources—efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience. More specifically, PsyCap is an individual’s positive psychological state of development characterized by: (1) having confidence (efficacy) to take on and put in the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks; (2) making a positive attribution (optimism) about succeeding now and in the future; (3) persevering toward goals and, when necessary, redirecting paths to goals (hope) in order to succeed; and (4) when beset by problems and adversity, sustaining and bouncing back and even beyond (resilience) to attain success (Luthans, Youssef, …

Opportunity In Ohio: Rethinking Northeast Ohio's Opportunity Zones With Local Legislation, Patrick J. Lipaj

Cleveland State Law Review

Welcome to Census Tract 1186.02! Here, in a small sliver of Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood, tucked between Superior and Hough Avenues, you will uncover a lot. You will discover a rich history of the city’s ethnic and cultural roots. You will also find gang violence, underperforming schools, a median household income of $9,526, and a poverty rate of 66.5 percent. Something you will not find in 1186.02 is investment. Private or public, money is not flowing in to 1186.02 and it has not for a long time. The substantial toll of continuous underinvestment on the residents of this neighborhood, one of …

Psychosocial Impacts And Employment Preparedness Of Participating In An Hiv Peer Program: Implications For Tailoring A Vocational Counseling Model For Plwh, Erin R. Mckinney-Prupis

Dissertations and Theses

Background:

Medical advancements in HIV care should have reduced barriers to employment for PLWH, yet in 2017 only 47.7% of PLWH reported being employed, as compared to 62.9% in the general population. Employment is a significant social determinant of health, it impacts a variety of factors related to health, including earned income, access to healthcare, and social connectedness. Quantitative and qualitative studies have identified several concerns PLWH have about entering the workforce; the most pressing being fear of losing benefits. Targeted work readiness programs for PLWH is an important approach to help PLWH overcome their unique barriers to work, such …