In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, January 28, President Obama focused a significant portion of his speech on the issue of inequality in the U.S. Citing the expiration of unemployment insurance and a stagnant minimum wage as two major roadblocks to economic security for many Americans, the president outlined an ambitious plan to alleviate financial distress for low-income individuals, including raising the minimum wage. “Today the federal minimum wage is worth about twenty percent less than it was when Ronald Reagan first stood here,” Obama stated, introducing a bill to fix that would lift the minimum wage to $10.10. He continued, “This will help families. It will give businesses customers with more money to spend. It does not involve any new bureaucratic program.”

Newly published research from the Russell Sage Foundation sheds important new light on Obama’s plan of poverty relief. A new book, What Works for Workers?, examines the public policies that have already been developed to aid to low-income workers. In their chapter, “Low-Wage Workers and Paid Family Leave: The California Experience,” contributors Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum offer an analysis of California’s paid family leave program, a policy designed to benefit the working poor, who have few resources that allow them to take time off work to care for children or ill family members. Despite initial opposition, the paid leave program proved more acceptable than expected among employers and provided a much-needed system of wage replacement for low-income workers. In the wake of its success, the initiative has emerged as a useful blueprint for paid leave programs in other states. Though Obama did not propose a specific initiative for implementing paid leave for mothers, he acknowledged the importance of such programs, stating, “[Mothers] deserve to have a baby without sacrificing her job. A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship.”

In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama spoke at length about increased economic disparities in the United States and announced a series of presidential initiatives to make sure that the benefits of economic growth are shared widely. My analysis of our experience since President Johnson declared War on Poverty in his State of the Union Address fifty years ago is that poverty will fall substantially and inequality will decline only if two factors are operating at the same time. First, the economy must be expanding and the unemployment rate must be below 5 percent. Second, government policies must stay focused on helping those among the poor and near-poor who are left behind by economic growth. The problem is that since the early 1970s, during most of the years when the economy was expanding, economic growth was not trickling down to the poor or even to the middle class, and government policies were not doing enough to help those not sharing in the economy’s increased productivity.

The relationship between economic growth and poverty in recent years refutes the view that poverty remains high because the government provides too much aid for the poor, and thus encourages idleness and other dysfunctional behaviors. Poverty would be somewhat lower today if fewer low-skilled men had withdrawn from the labor market and if marriage rates had not declined so much and if there had been less immigration of workers with little education. However, these effects are small compared to the poverty-increasing effects of a labor market that shifted from a quarter century of rapid economic growth following the end of World War II in which a rising tide lifted all boats to almost forty years of slower growth and rising inequality.

Two Russell Sage Foundation books were recently reviewed in the January 2014 issue of Contemporary Sociology. Whither Opportunity?: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances (2012), a volume edited by Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane, received glowing praise from reviewer Linda Renzulli of the University of Georgia, who called the book “a must read for scholars in education, family, and labor markets.”

At the close of 2013, Republicans in Congress blocked the renewal of Emergency Unemployment Insurance, a measure that has allowed long-term unemployed Americans to continue to receive unemployment insurance benefits beyond the maximum 26-week benefit period. The failure to renew this extension ended benefits for 1.3 million Americans. Unemployment insurance has long been at the center of fierce debates over the nature of the U.S. social safety net. Conservatives claim that such benefits create a disincentive for the unemployed to seek work, while progressives argue that they are a crucial source of income for those who have lost jobs, especially during periods during and after recessions, when the labor market is at its most competitive and jobs remain scarce.

A new volume from the Russell Sage Foundation assesses the effectiveness of unemployment insurance alongside other policy measures designed to aid workers. What Works for Workers?, edited by Stephanie Luce, Jennifer Luff, Joseph A. McCartin, and Ruth Milkman, provides a comprehensive analysis of policies focused on low-wage workers and the expanding income gap in the U.S. Featuring contributions from an eminent group of social scientists, What Works for Workers? evaluates the most high-profile strategies for poverty reduction, including innovative “living wage” ordinances, education programs for African American youth, and better regulation of labor laws pertaining to immigrants. The contributors delve into an extensive body of scholarship on low-wage work to reveal a number of surprising findings.