Browsing: Upward Mobility

If you’re not married to whomever you hooked up with nine months before your baby was born, you’re very unlikely to be together 15 years later. That makes it a lot harder to pay the bills.

For decades, the federal government has assumed a larger role in funding and running safety net programs, leaving states with little ability to address flaws such as employment and marriage disincentives and little power to make changes. State leaders must work to change this.

The good things in life in this democracy — opportunity, fulfillment, upward mobility, prosperity, the redounding energy and succor that comes from free association, love of relatives and friends

Angela Rachidi, resident scholar in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and Eloise Anderson, former secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and a Badger Institute visiting fellow, discuss safety net programs and work in Wisconsin. Rachidi is author of the January 2020 Badger Institute report “Wisconsin’s missing rung: Policies linked to work are critical to lifting people out of poverty.”