The Century Foundation has released a new report, “Doing More for Our Children,” by a Columbia University research team that includes RSF scholars and grantees Irwin Garfinkel, Jane Waldfogel, and Christopher Wimer, with David Harris.

In their study, the authors explored policy measures for fighting child poverty in the United States, which they called “stubbornly high, with more than 12 million American children—16.5 percent of all children—currently living in poverty.” They modeled five child allowance policies and five Childhood Tax Credit (CTC) policies to examine their impact on the child poverty rate, number of children in poverty, cost and marginal cost (based on the current CTC). The authors found that a universal child allowance of $4,000 a year would cut child poverty in the U.S. in half, while a more modest $2,500 universal child allowance would more than triple the anti-poverty effect of the current Child Tax Credit (CTC).

“Policymakers could substantially reduce the child poverty rate, if they were willing to commit to a universal child allowance,” the authors said. “An expanded CTC with a more generous phase in rate would also meaningfully reduce poverty among children and families.”

Key findings from the report include:

• Providing a child allowance of $2,500 to all children under age 6 (leaving intact the CTC for children age 6 and above) would lift 3.2 million children out of poverty.
• Investing in a universal child allowance that provides $2,500 per child for all families with children (age 0–17) would lift 5.5 million children out of poverty—more than triple the antipoverty effect of the current CTC.
• A universal child allowance of $4,000 per child (age 0–17) would cut child poverty in half and lift 8.1 million children out of poverty.
• While the current CTC plays an important antipoverty role, it does little to assist children living in deep poverty (because it is linked to work), but a $4,000 child allowance would reduce the deep poverty rate by almost two-thirds.
• A dollar invested in a universal child allowance would do more to reduce child poverty than a dollar spent on an expanded child tax credit.

In late 2014, President Obama announced two new executive actions concerning undocumented immigrants, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA). While immigrant rights advocates have argued that both programs—which create paths for qualifying noncitizens to avoid deportation and receive work permits—could deliver much-needed relief to vulnerable segments of the population, legal opposition from Texas and twenty-five other states has suspended their implementation. The fates of DACA and DAPA now rest with the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear the case, United States v. Texas, in April 2016.

In preparation for the court case, First Focus, a bipartisan child and family advocacy organization, and a number of other education and children’s advocacy groups have filed a new amicus brief on how the implementation of the DACA and DAPA programs will “help promote the healthy development of the over five million children living in mixed-status families in the United States.” The brief cites a range of RSF-funded research on immigration, the labor market, and inequality, including trustee Hiro Yoshikawa’s RSF book Immigrants Raising Citizens—which provides an in-depth look at the challenges undocumented immigrants face as they raise children in the U.S.—and former Visiting Scholar Sean Reardon’s chapter from the RSF book Whither Opportunity, which shows that parents’ socioeconomic status is one of the strongest predictors of children’s academic achievement. As the brief points out, issuing work authorization to undocumented parents can be expected to raise their wages by 6-10 percent.

A new report summarizes the findings of immigration research funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and conducted by a team of scholars at the University of California, Irvine over the course of eighteen months.

Between January 2014 and September 2015, Susan Coutin and colleagues investigated the uncertainties surrounding two immigration-related “Executive Relief” programs, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA). While DACA and DAPA would have allowed qualifying noncitizens to avoid deportation and receive federal work authorization starting in 2015, legal challenges prevented them from taking effect, leaving eligible undocumented immigrants in legal limbo.

Drawing from 16 in-depth interviews with staff of 10 different immigrant serving organizations and 47 interviews with noncitizens in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas, the authors captured the on-the-ground challenges facing noncitizens and community based organizations as the scope and availability of DACA and DAPA were debated. Their report explores the hardships and barriers to incorporation imposed by ambiguous legal status, the challenges faced by organizations mediating between their constituents and the state in periods of legal uncertainty, and the ways that uncertainty has reshaped the social, political and legal environment in which immigrant-serving organizations and their constituents interact.