Reducing Intergenerational Poverty (2024) / Chapter Skim
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11 Research and Data Needs for Understanding and Ameliorating Intergenerational Poverty
11 Research and Data Needs for Understanding and Ameliorating Intergenerational Poverty
Pages 221-246
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From page 221... ...
, as well as developing and implementing large-scale, effective policies and programs to ameliorate intergenerational poverty. The committee reviewed research on potentially important drivers of intergenerational poverty in the following domains: children's education and the educational system; child health and the health care system; family income and wealth and parental earnings and employment; family structure; housing, residential mobility, and neighborhood conditions; neighborhood safety and the criminal justice system; and child maltreatment and the child welfare system (see Chapters 4–10 for the committee's assessment of the evidence and Appendix C: Chapter 11 for the conclusions regarding 221
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It emphasizes that this should not be taken to mean that most of those other programs are ineffective -- only that their intergenerational impacts have not been assessed. This fact is sobering but not surprising, given the expense and difficulty of scaling up promising interventions identified in controlled experiments, the length of time required to see the effects of interventions on intergenerational poverty, the difficulties of assembling data for historical, retrospective analysis, and the costs of obtaining an adequate sample size for populations most at risk of intergenerational poverty, especially Native Americans.
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Eliminate the proration of SNAP benefits for citizen children with undocumented parents Family Income, Wealth, and Employment • Work-based Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit by increasing income support payments along some or all portions of the schedule and possibly by providing a credit to families with no earnings* Family Structure None identified by research to date (continued)
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Housing and Neighborhoods • Residential Expand coverage of the Housing Choice Voucher program mobility and couple it with customized counseling and case management services to facilitate moves to low-poverty neighborhoods Neighborhood Crime and the Criminal Justice System • Juvenile Use juvenile confinement only for youth who pose a serious incarceration and immediate threat to public safety* • Child investment Improve school quality and reduce lead exposure in ways strategies identified in the education and health categories*
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Using longitudinal survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the researchers found that the adult cardiovascular health of children born in counties already offering the Food Stamp Program was much better relative to children who were born at the same time but grew up in counties that did not offer food stamps until they had entered school. Bailey et al.
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RESEARCH FUNDING PRINCIPLES AND GUIDANCE Principles In an effort to identify proven programs for boosting every child's chance to succeed, the committee proposes three broad principles for research funding. These principles apply both to evaluations of the effectiveness of past policy and program changes and to prospective research -- that is, research where previous experimentation has not been done or has failed to identify promising programs and where retrospective research is impossible.
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provide badly biased estimates of program im pacts (Cook et al., 2008; LaLonde, 1986) .1 • Principle 2: For prospective research, set aside funding for rigor ous, small-scale experiments, but also for replications, scaled-up evaluations, and long-term follow-ups of promising programs.
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Child and Maternal Health • Conduct rigorous evaluations of the longer-run impacts of programs based in schools, clinics, community care settings, and primary care providers ad dressing children and youth's mental health needs. • Conduct rigorous research around the most effective gun safety measures to reduce youth firearm-related injury and death, the leading cause of death among U.S.
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NOTES: LIHEAP = Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program; NSLP = National School Lunch Program; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; SSI = Supplemental Security Income.
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Economics, sociology, cultural anthropology, psychology, and subject matter expertise in the par ticular domain (e.g., education, health care) and program evalua tion all have something to contribute, especially since the causes and effects of intergenerational poverty span so many domains.
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Since people whose families have been poor for generations are vulnerable and perhaps also suspi cious of researchers, it is imperative, in ethical and practical terms, for research on intergenerational poverty to work with the com munities involved. The committee's listening sessions with Native American families, low-income families, and others underscored this point.
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Currently, there is no direct way to estimate the incidence of student loan forgiveness by students' own income, family income, or other demographic characteristics like race, nor whether and how student debt impacts intergenerational mobility out of poverty. If data from the Department of Education's National Student Loan Data System3 could be linked to Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
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Census Bureau has collected data on household and family income and employment in censuses and surveys, including what is now known as the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) , the American Community Survey (ACS)
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but only after a lag, at a cost, and within the NCHS secure data center.a Medicare and Medicaid claims records, available to the Census Bureau and re searchers (in the case of Medicaid with significant lags) , are another potentially useful source of information on health conditions and treatments among poor populations.
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At the University of Michigan, CJARS collects longitudinal electronic records from criminal justice agencies and harmonizes these records to track a criminal episode across all stages of the system. At the Census Bureau, harmonized criminal justice records can be linked anonymously at the person-level with extensive social, demographic, and economic information from national survey and administrative records.
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For cost and feasibility reasons, panel surveys generally have relatively small overall sample sizes. Yet there are opportunities, outlined below, to enhance their ability to identify areas for targeted research and follow-up of policy and program interventions that could ameliorate intergenerational poverty.
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In addition, many of the institutions that house research data centers charge researchers for a "seat."5 The Statistics of Income program of the IRS has its own small program of research access to tax data (which must be carried out at IRS facilities when individual 4 Appendix C: Chapter 11, Table 11-1 documents types of IRS data available and not avail able to the Census Bureau under regulation 6103(j)
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, home equity, retirement equity, education tax-deferred accounts, and health insurance coverage on the asset side, along with debts for mortgages, credit cards, student loans, and medical care on the debit side. Tax returns provide or can be used to infer some of these items, and surveys ask about some of them, but additional sources are needed to obtain a complete picture -- for example, records from the National Student Loan Data System.7 Promising Developments Data Linkage Projects Several statistical agencies are engaged in linkage efforts to help understand economic mobility and child outcomes that can foster mobility.
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. Three linkage projects at the Census Bureau are particularly promising for retrospective and prospective research on intergenerational poverty owing to their content and time span: the American Opportunity Study (AOS)
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1 on the responsibilities of statistical agencies to produce relevant, objective data; added the presumption that statistical agencies may, on request, obtain federal data for evidence-building; expanded secure access to CIPSEA data assets; required a standard data application process for researchers to use confidential data; and charged the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
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These are outlined next. Technical Challenges The Census Bureau has developed robust linking software, which performs very well for people with Social Security Numbers or Taxpayer Identification Numbers and reasonably well using date of birth and name agencies' confidentiality and disclosure policies.
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In fact, there is evidence that the Census Bureau's implementation of differentially private algorithms and deletion of previously available data in the 2020 census products has adversely affected data users out of proportion to the gains in privacy protection.10 In contrast, the Year 2 Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building (2022) report concludes that: (1)
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Legal Challenges Despite undoubted advances in normalizing the use of linked datasets for research and evidence building, significant legal gaps remain. Titles 13 and 26 still restrict the use of census and IRS data to projects that will benefit the Census Bureau and tax administration, respectively.
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set aside funding, not only for rigorous, small-scale experiments, but also for replications and long-term follow-ups of promising programs and (c) fund research arms for specific communi ties that are at highest risk of intergenerational poverty (e.g., American Indians on tribal lands, rural Black people)
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Conclusion 11-4: At present, data for studying intergenerational pov erty and related topics are controlled by a variety of federal and state agencies and are difficult to link or use for research or policy evalua tion. Recent developments designed to ameliorate this situation include the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act of 2018, which presumes access to federal data by statistical agencies for evidence building and calls for a streamlined process for researcher access to such data; supportive reports of the Commission on Evidence-based Policymaking and other organizations; and innovative projects at the Census Bureau and other agencies aimed at building linked datasets.
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(1) -1 for research use; • Work within OMB and with relevant agencies and congressional committees to secure sustained funding for data linkage projects, Federal Statistical Research Data Centers, and technical capacity in the states to share records to support cost-effective research and policy analysis on intergenerational poverty, economic opportunity, and related topics; and • Work with relevant agencies to establish guidelines for consent and data storage that will facilitate the re-use of survey and intervention data, linked to subsequent administrative records, for long-term follow-up and for studies not yet anticipated at the time of the original study.
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