The Russell Sage Foundation began to publish compilations of bibliographies and directories of American foundations in 1915. This 1946 volume is an outgrowth of the foundation’s early reference work. In addition to listing and describing foundations, this book discusses their history, organization, resources, fields of activity, and general trends useful to foundation boards and the general public alike. It contains a descriptive directory of 505 foundations.

Shelby M. Harrison was general director of the Russell Sage Foundation.

F. Emerson Andrews was director of publications at the Russell Sage Foundation.

“Tax breaks are the largest component of the U.S. welfare state, more costly than Social Security and Medicare combined. Christopher Ellis and Christopher Faricy’s pathbreaking analysis illuminates the broad political appeal of these programs in a country wary of ‘big government’ and obsessed with ‘deservingness.’ It also highlights the social cost—in economic inequality and unrelieved poverty—of America’s peculiar reliance on a submerged welfare state.”
—Larry M. Bartels, May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science, Vanderbilt University

“The Other Side of the Coin is far and away the most in-depth study of American attitudes toward tax expenditures. The authors and that standard models of public opinion provide an incomplete understanding of these attitudes, demonstrating along the way that tax expenditures could be a fruitful pathway to generating support for redistribution.”
—Nathan J. Kelly, professor, Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee

Despite high levels of inequality and wage stagnation over several decades, the U.S. has done relatively little to address these problems – at least in part due to public opinion, which remains highly influential in determining the size and scope of social welfare programs that provide direct benefits to retirees, unemployed workers or poor families. On the other hand, social tax expenditures – or tax subsidies that help citizens pay for expenses such as health insurance or costs of college, and invest in retirement plans – have been widely and successfully implemented, and they now comprise nearly 40 percent of the spending of the American social welfare state.  In The Other Side of the Coin, political scientists Christopher Ellis and Christopher Faricy examine public opinion towards social tax expenditures — the other side of the American social welfare state – and their potential to expand support for such social investment.

Tax expenditures seek to accomplish many of the goals of direct government expenditures, but they distribute money indirectly, through tax refunds or reductions in taxable income, rather than direct payments on goods and services or benefits. They tend to privilege market-based solutions to social problems such as employer-based tax subsidies for purchasing health insurance versus government-provided health insurance.

Drawing on nationally representative surveys and survey experiments, Ellis and Faricy show that social welfare policies designed as tax expenditures, as opposed to direct spending on social welfare programs, are widely popular with the general public. Contrary to previous research suggesting that recipients of these subsidies are often unaware of indirect government aid – sometimes called “the hidden welfare state” – Ellis and Faricy find that citizens are well aware of them and act in their economic self-interest in supporting tax breaks for social welfare purposes. The authors find that many people view the beneficiaries of social tax expenditures to be more deserving of government aid than recipients of direct public social programs, indicating that how government benefits are delivered affects people’s views of recipients’ worthiness. Importantly, tax expenditures are more likely to appeal to citizens with anti-government attitudes, low levels of trust in government, or racial prejudices. As a result, social spending conducted through the tax code is likely to be far more popular than direct government spending on public programs that have the same goals.

The first empirical examination of the broad popularity of tax expenditures, The Other Side of the Coin provides compelling insights into constructing a politically feasible—and potentially bipartisan—way to expand the scope of the American welfare state.

“By bringing together two strands of social science research that are usually treated separately—those on youth transitions to adulthood and incarceration—and by providing careful new data analysis, David J. Harding and Heather M. Harris make an important contribution to our understanding of incarceration, race and poverty in America. Their nuanced portrait of the long-term outcomes observed among incarcerated youth is insightful, and generates major implicationsfor both research and policy.”
—HARRY J. HOLZER, John LaFarge Jr. SJ Professor of Public Policy, Georgetown University

The incarceration rate in the United States is the highest of any developed nation, with a prison population of approximately 2.3 million in 2016. Over 700,000 prisoners are released each year, and most face significant educational, economic, and social disadvantages. In After Prison, sociologist David Harding and criminologist Heather Harris provide a comprehensive account of young men’s experiences of reentry and reintegration in the era of mass incarceration. They focus on the unique challenges faced by 1,300 black and white youth aged 18 to 25 who were released from Michigan prisons in 2003, investigating the lives of those who achieved some measure of success after leaving prison as well as those who struggled with the challenges of creating new lives for themselves.

The transition to young adulthood typically includes school completion, full-time employment, leaving the childhood home, marriage, and childbearing, events that are disrupted by incarceration. While one quarter of the young men who participated in the study successfully transitioned into adulthood—achieving employment and residential independence and avoiding arrest and incarceration—the same number of young men remained deeply involved with the criminal justice system, spending on average four out of the seven years after their initial release re-incarcerated. Not surprisingly, whites are more likely to experience success after prison. The authors attribute this racial disparity to the increased stigma of criminal records for blacks, racial discrimination, and differing levels of social network support that connect whites to higher quality jobs. Black men earn less than white men, are more concentrated in industries characterized by low wages and job insecurity, and are less likely to remain employed once they have a job.

The authors demonstrate that families, social networks, neighborhoods, and labor market, educational, and criminal justice institutions can have a profound impact on young people’s lives. Their research indicates that residential stability is key to the transition to adulthood. Harding and Harris make the case for helping families, municipalities, and non-profit organizations provide formerly incarcerated young people access to long-term supportive housing and public housing. A remarkably large number of men in this study eventually enrolled in college, reflecting the growing recognition of college as a gateway to living wage work. But the young men in the study spent only brief spells in college, and the majority failed to earn degrees. They were most likely to enroll in community colleges, trade schools, and for-profit institutions, suggesting that interventions focused on these kinds of schools are more likely to be effective. The authors suggest that, in addition to helping students find employment, educational institutions can aid reentry efforts for the formerly incarcerated by providing supports like childcare and paid apprenticeships.

After Prison offers a set of targeted policy interventions to improve these young people’s chances: lifting restrictions on federal financial aid for education, encouraging criminal record sealing and expungement, and reducing the use of incarceration in response to technical parole violations. This book will be an important contribution to the fields of scholarly work on the criminal justice system and disconnected youth.

DAVID J. HARDING  is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

HEATHER M. HARRIS is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

A pamphlet on the physical standards adopted and promoted by the Playground and Recreation Association of America for adolescent boys through a badge test.

A Brief Description of the Springfield Survey Exhibition, reprinted from The American City, vol. XII, No. 2, February 1915.

This pamphlet reviews the work of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, as well as the National Conference of Jewish Charities, in regard to relief and care for the homeless. It was written while the Transient Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the first nationwide program for the care of the homeless, was in operation.

Jeffrey R. Brackett was chairman of advisory board, Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare.

From Charities and the Commons, promoting the benefits of outdoor play and public playgrounds.

Elmer Elsworth Brown, United States Commissioner of Education

This pamphlet provides recommendations for safer celebratory traditions for the Fourth of July.

August H. Brunner, Department of Child Hygiene, Russell Sage Foundation

A model aimed for use by various institutions that provide asylum to orphaned children and struggling mothers, including temporary receiving homes into which mothers who might otherwise abandon their children are received with them. The model is designed to exhibited the chief sanitary features which the medical profession recognize as essential to success in saving the lives and improving the vitality of the babies who must have institutional care temporarily.

From the foreword: “Every other winter the legislatures of about forty states meet in deliberative session. They consider approximately 1,000 bills on educational questions and enact about 200 of them into law. This pamphlet has been compiled with the object of making available to legislators, school workers, and others having at heart the interests of public education, salient facts concerning school conditions in all the states. The figures have been derived from official sources and every care exercised to insure their accuracy. Every endeavor has been made to avoid complexities and technicalities. The object of the work is to render available to each state the experience of all.