Issues: Work and Income Security

Work Support and Asset Building

MDRC has launched a number of projects aimed at fostering the long-term economic security of low-wage workers through more stable employment and higher earnings, improved skills, better access to work supports (like the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, and subsidized child care), and opportunities to build savings.

The Latest
Brief

Increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit for Childless Workers

The Paycheck Plus Demonstration in New York and Atlanta offered an expanded after-tax bonus to low-income workers without dependent children, a population that benefits little from the current Earned Income Tax Credit. This brief presents impacts on employment, earnings, and income based on the pooled sample from both cities.

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Full
Report

An Earned Income Tax Credit That Works for Singles

Paycheck Plus expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit for single workers with low incomes and without qualifying children in two cities, offering a tax credit of up to $2,000. This report presents three-year findings from the program in Atlanta.

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Key Documents
Issue Focus

Should the Government Subsidize Jobs for the Unemployed?

In this essay, originally published in Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, Dan Bloom reviews what research says about subsidized jobs programs – and how they can be a strategy both for tough economic times and for the hard-to-employ in better labor markets.

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Issue Focus

How a Safety Net Built Around Work Is Not Up to the Job

In this commentary published by Spotlight on Poverty, MDRC President Gordon Berlin makes the case for creating a more flexible safety net that continues to reward work when jobs are plentiful, provides employment to poor families when jobs disappear, and begins to address the problem of stagnant wages at the low end of the labor market.

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Issue Focus

Developing Low-Cost Solutions to Improve Public Policy

The Work of MDRC’s Center for Applied Behavioral Science

This issue focus describes how MDRC’s Center for Applied Behavioral Science has completed several large-scale field studies, incorporated behavioral science into other MDRC projects, and educated policymakers and practitioners about how to use behavioral science to improve their programs.

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