Compared to unpaid leave, paid family leave may better help working parents balance the competing needs of job and family early in a child's life, among other advantages. Yet the United States remains one of only two countries in the world without a statutory national paid maternity leave policy, and one of the only high-income countries that…

National and regional trends mask important variation among states in the supply of high school graduates. This profile provides brief indicators for Connecticut related to: current levels of educational attainment, projections of high school graduates into the future, and two common barriers to student access and success--insufficient academic…

Connecticut's Jobs First program was subjected to a rigorous, large-scale evaluation. During the evaluation, nearly 5,000 single-parent welfare applicants and recipients in 2 cities were randomly assigned to Jobs First or to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) group. Each group's progress was compared over a 4-year period. The…

This study uses 1980 Census information and post-Census trends to develop an information base for the Latino community in the tri-state region of Southern New York, Northern New Jersey, and Western Connecticut. This reference base provides a demographic and socioeconomic profile of the Latino community in the following categories: (1) the…

Data from the 1980 Census, post-Census supplements, and other sources are used to establish a base of information on the Asian American community in the tri-state (New York/New Jersey/Connecticut) metropolitan area, in order to assess the social service needs of this population. The Asian American presence and the growth and diversity of the…

As welfare-to-work reforms increase women's labor market attachment, the lives of their young children are likely to change. This note draws on a random-assignment experiment in Connecticut to ask whether mothers' rising employment levels and program participation are associated with changes in young children's early learning and cognitive growth.…

The General Accounting Office (GAO) examined progress in meeting work-focused goals of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. The following issues were considered: (1) states' progress in implementing TANF; (2) the status of families who have left welfare; (3) the characteristics of adults currently receiving TANF; (4) states'…