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Poverty Research & Policy

Poverty Research & Policy

Institute for Research on Poverty

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The Poverty Research & Policy Podcast is produced by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) and features interviews with researchers about poverty, inequality, and policy in the United States.
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Top 10 Poverty Research & Policy Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Poverty Research & Policy episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Poverty Research & Policy for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Poverty Research & Policy episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

In this podcast episode, University of Wisconsin–Madison Professor of Public Affairs and Social Work Maria Cancian talks about the changing demographics of U.S. families and the challenges this creates for the child support system.

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The idea of a universal basic income has been gaining traction in recent years, but we don’t have much evidence about what a large-scale universal basic income policy would do. In this episode, University of Chicago economist Damon Jones talks about the idea of a universal basic income and discusses a study he did with Ioana Marinescu that looked at the Alaska Permanent Fund to better understand the labor market effects of universal and permanent cash payments.

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In this podcast episode, IRP National Poverty Fellow Kathleen Moore talks about the Housing Choice Voucher Program and her research about how landlords respond to inquiries from potential renters who hold housing vouchers.

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Poverty Research & Policy - Amelie Hecht on Universal Free School Meal Programs
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11/29/21 • 14 min

In this episode we hear from Dr. Amelie Hecht about universal free school meal programs and how the pandemic may have shifted the outlook for this kind of program.

Dr. Hecht is a fellow in the IRP National Poverty Fellows Program where she is in residence at the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation at the federal Administration for Children and Families.

Transcript:

Dave Chancellor: Hello, and thanks for joining us for the Poverty Research and Policy podcast from the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. I’m Dave Chancellor for this episode. We’re going to be talking to Dr Amelie Hecht about universal free school meals and how the pandemic may have shifted the outlook for this kind of program as we look ahead. Dr. Hecht is a fellow in the IRP National Poverty Fellows program, where she’s in residence at the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation at the Federal Administration for Children and Families. She completed her Ph.D. in Health Policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2020. And we’re just really grateful to be able to talk to her about this. Let’s turn to my interview with Dr. Hecht.

Chancellor: You wrote your dissertation on Universal Free School Meals, and this has become a big thing, especially kind of since the start of the pandemic. And just to make sure we’re thinking about this in the right way, could you explain how a universal free school meal set up is different from what we might think of as a traditional school meal funding?

Amelie Hecht: Yeah, absolutely. So traditionally, the school meal program is in part a means tested program. And what that means is that under the traditional school meal reimbursement model, families complete an annual application with information about their household income, and kids are then eligible to receive a free meal if their family’s household income is below 130 percent of the federal poverty level. It’s about an annual income of thirty-four thousand dollars for a family of four, and then a child can also receive a reduced price meal, which means they pay about 40 cents for lunch if their household income is between one hundred and thirty and one hundred and eighty five percent of the federal poverty level. And then, of course, any other student didn’t qualify for free or reduced price. Meals can also buy a meal, which cost somewhere around a dollar, fifty for breakfast and 250 for lunch, so still relatively low cost. But a school that offers universal free meals offers free meals to all students, regardless of their household income. So those schools no longer collect individual household application forms. All students just get free meals, and in most schools in the U.S., they offer universal free meals through a federal provision called the Community Eligibility Provision. And that’s a provision that’s available to schools in high poverty areas.

Chancellor: The timing of you finishing your dissertation coincided really closely with the start of the pandemic back in early 2020. And I guess out of necessity, this was kind of a sea change when it came to universal free school meals because they have this rate. Basically, the USDA gave school districts a waiver that allowed them to offer free breakfasts and lunches to all students. Is that right? Can you tell us about this?

Hecht: Yeah, that’s exactly right. So, prior to the pandemic, it was mostly just these schools in high poverty areas that were offering these universal free meals through that provision that I mentioned, for the most part, the community eligibility provision. But when the pandemic began, Congress recognized that schools needed more flexibility to ensure kids were getting fed and that the need for school meals was really increasing dramatically because people were losing their jobs and facing other economic hardship. Congress authorized the USDA, the US Department of Agriculture, to issue these nationwide waivers that allowed schools to serve universal free meals to all students. And that authority has been extended through the end of the current academic year, which is June of 2022. And that waiver has been really hugely helpful to schools and families. It’s meant that schools most schools in the US have been serving free meals to all kids, which is really important at a time when families are facing hard economic times and also schools are facing hard economic times.

Chancellor: As a parent, this program was actually really valuable to my family, especially during the months when my kids were doing remote schooling. Our district encouraged parents to sign up for lunch pickup, and honestly, it better lives measurably better. During that time, we were saving money. There was a steady supply of pretty healthy food coming into our house, and it was just a significant time savings fo...

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Poverty Research & Policy - The Anti-Poverty Intern: Episode 4: Kadijha Marquardt-Davis
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04/27/21 • 12 min

In this episode, we hear from Kadijha Marquardt-Davis, who was a legislative assistant in the Wisconsin State Legislature at the time of the interview and has since become policy advisor for a representative in the legislature. In the interview, Marquardt-Davis talks about how she became interested in policy, tips for transitioning from school to the professional world, and the importance of finding a mentor.

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There are known protective factors that can help young people exiting foster care to thrive by reducing or eliminating the challenges that they often face. By measuring resilience over time, and viewing it as “a state, not a trait,” there is more opportunity to create networks and systems to support these young people as they transition to adulthood. In this episode, Dr. Svetlana Shpiegel discusses her co-authored paper, “Resilient Outcomes among Youth Aging-Out of Foster Care: Findings from the National Youth in Transition Database,” and shares how she and her colleagues assessed sustained resilience, periodic resilience, and sustained non-resilience among young adults exiting care, and why policies like Extended Foster Care are vital.

Svetlana Shpiegel is an Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work and Child Advocacy at Montclair State University. Her research interests include adolescents transitioning from foster care, child abuse and neglect, risk and resilience among vulnerable populations, and early pregnancy and parenthood among child-welfare involved youth.

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The federal government established a temporary water assistance program to alleviate the burden of water costs on households during the COVID-19 pandemic. Establishing a permanent water assistance program can increase long-term water affordability for households. In this episode, Dr. Manny Teodoro discusses the report he co-authored for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies that assessed options for a permanent federal water assistance program and shares how extending SNAP benefits would help increase water affordability.

Manny Teodoro is the Robert and Sylvia Wagner Professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on U.S. environmental policy and implementation, as well as utility management, policy, and finance.

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Poverty Research & Policy - Deyanira Nevarez Martinez On The Latinx Paradox And Homelessness
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02/27/23 • 26 min

Official measures of homelessness seem to indicate that the Latinx community is less affected than most other minoritized racial groups. But this aspect of what is called “The Latinx Paradox” might in fact be due to the extent of homelessness in Latinx communities being obscured by other factors. In this episode, Dr. Deyanira Nevarez Martinez shares her research into the nuances of Latinx housing precarity, and why understanding the Latinx experience of homelessness is vital for effective public policy and human services provision. Dr. Nevarez Martinez is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Michigan State University and a core faculty member in Chicano Latino studies. She is also an IRP Emerging Poverty Scholar.

Professor Nevarez Martinez's December 2022 IRP seminar presentation.

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When it comes to cash transfer programs like welfare for single parents and especially mothers, most of the evaluation and economic modeling efforts have focused on how those programs impact the amount of paid work single parents do. However, there's been less attention to the value of parental time and how that matters for children's development. For this podcast episode, we hear from economist Joseph Mullins of the University of Minnesota, who developed an economic model for U.S. cash transfer programs that attempts to place an accurate value on parents' time when assessing cash transfers programs. He says his model suggests a very different structure for our cash transfer programs if we want to best balance children's need for money resources and parental time for their healthy development.

Link to the paper: http://www.josephlyonmullins.com/DesigningCashTransfers_Children_Draft.pdf

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Poverty Research & Policy - Kathryn Edin on the 25th Anniversary of "Making Ends Meet"
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06/15/22 • 39 min

2022 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low Wage Work, by Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein. The book was based on interviews with low-income single moms that took place between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Edin and Lein detailed the women's household budgets, the strategies they used to support their families, and the unforgiving choice between welfare and low-wage work. In this episode, we hear from Kathryn Edin about what she learned from talking to these mothers and about the changes in U.S. antipoverty policy in the 25 years since Making Ends Meet was published.

A transcript for the episode is available at https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/kathryn-edin-on-the-25th-anniversary-of-making-ends-meet/.

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FAQ

How many episodes does Poverty Research & Policy have?

Poverty Research & Policy currently has 118 episodes available.

What topics does Poverty Research & Policy cover?

The podcast is about Podcasts, Education, Social Sciences and Science.

What is the most popular episode on Poverty Research & Policy?

The episode title 'Damon Jones on Whether a Modest Basic Income Might Lead People to Work Less' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Poverty Research & Policy?

The average episode length on Poverty Research & Policy is 24 minutes.

How often are episodes of Poverty Research & Policy released?

Episodes of Poverty Research & Policy are typically released every 27 days, 23 hours.

When was the first episode of Poverty Research & Policy?

The first episode of Poverty Research & Policy was released on Sep 7, 2015.

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