unemployment insurance duration

Urban Institute: Work/Income
Urban Institute reports on: Work/Income - The Urban Institute is a nonprofit nonpartisan policy research and educational organization established to examine the social, economic, and governance problems facing the nation.

• Unemployment and Income in a Recession : Recession and Recovery, No. 1
  This brief, part of the Urban Institute's "Recession and Recover" series, assesses how unemployment and household income changes as the economy moves through a recession and into recovery.
• Unemployment Insurance during a Recession : Recession and Recovery, No. 2
  This brief, part of the Urban Institute's "Recession and Recover" series, examines how the Unemployment Insurance program responds during a recession and how that response may differ in the current recession from its response in the past.
• The Role of Welfare during a Recession : Recession and Recovery, No. 3
  This brief, part of the Urban Institute's "Recession and Recover" series, examines how the TANF program (formerly AFDC) responds during a recession and how that response may differ in the current recession from its response in the past.
• SNAP and the Recession : Recession and Recovery, No. 4
  This brief, part of the Urban Institute's "Recession and Recover" series, examines how the SNAP program (formerly food stamps) responds during a recession and how that response may differ in the current recession from its response in the past.
• The Recession and the Earned Income Tax Credit : Recession and Recovery, No. 5
  This brief, part of the Urban Institute's "Recession and Recover" series, assesses the extent to which the Earned Income Tax Credit can help families hit by job losses and falling incomes during a recession.
• Health Coverage in a Recession : Recession and Recovery, No. 6
  This brief, part of the Urban Institute's "Recession and Recover" series, examines how the Medicaid and SCHIP programs respond during a recession and how that response may differ in the current recession from their responses in the past. It also assesses the extent to which health insurance coverage may decline as unemployment rises.
• Recession and Recovery: Facts and Forecasts
  Six new briefs from the nonpartisan Urban Institute show how Americans have fared during and after downturns since the 1970s, what might be ahead, and how government programs aid those in distress.
• How Is the Recession Affecting Older Workers?
  With nearly 300,000 Americans age 65 and older out of work, the recession is hitting older workers hard. Old-age unemployment rates are increasing more rapidly than in most previous downturns. This fact sheet provides the latest numbers on the employment situation for older Americans.
• Older Workers and the Recession
  For older workers, this recession is unprecedented. Retirement expert Richard Johnson explains why and what should be done to cushion its impact on seniors who want to work.
• How Is the Financial Crisis Affecting Retirement Savings?
  The stock market lost 47 percent of its value between September 30, 2007 and December 2, 2008, a roughly $11 trillion drop. The loss has reduced the retirement savings of many Americans, particularly older adults. This fact sheet examines the impact of the ongoing economic turmoil on older households and presents estimates of the retirement account losses to date.
• Entry-Level and Next-Step Jobs in the Low-Skill Job Market : Brief No. 1
  This brief uses data from the 2007 Survey of Employers in the Low-Skill Labor Market to explore differences between noncollege jobs that have few if any requirements and those for which either a high school degree, prior experience, or previous skills training is extremely important.
• Low-Skill Jobs, Work Hours, and Paid Time Off : Brief No. 2
  This brief uses data from the 2007 Survey of Employers in the Low-Skill Labor Market to examine the scheduling demands employers place on workers recently hired to fill noncollege jobs and to assess the availability of paid time off, sick leave and other benefits that help workers balance their work and family lives.
• Job Placement Agencies and the Low-Skill Labor Market : Brief No. 3
  This brief uses data from the 2007 Survey of Employers in the Low-Skill Labor Market to describe the role job placement agencies play in helping employers fill noncollege jobs.
• Trends in Income Inequality, Volatility, and Mobility Risk
  A unified measure of inequality, volatility, and mobility risk is developed from well-known decompositions of a generalized entropy inequality measure using panel data. Variation across individuals in mean family income is termed inequality, and the variability of income over time is decomposed into volatility and mobility risk. I apply the decompositions to several decades of U.S. data and find every component increasing over time, and a large impact of taxes. I further find large swings in the progressivity of income growth after taxes that are not observed in pretax income, consistent with the known tax regimes in recent U.S. history.
• Understanding the Consequences of Hurricane Katrina for ACF Service Populations : A Feasibility Assessment of Study Approaches
  This report is an analysis of alternative datasets and research approaches to assess the effects of Hurricane Katrina on populations served by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Administration for Children and Families (ACF). The assessment addresses four overarching research questions, with an emphasis on using existing datasets: 1) where did populations of interest go and where are they living since Katrina; what are the effects on income and employment; what are the needs for ACF programs and services; and how did the disaster affect ACF programs themselves? The report includes an extensive annotated bibliography of analyses through January 2007.
• Workforce Development as an Antipoverty Strategy : What Do We Know? What Should We Do?
  In this paper I note the basic paradox of workforce development policy: that, in an era in which skills are more important than ever as determinants of labor market earnings, we spend fewer and fewer public (federal) dollars on workforce development over time. I present trends in funding and in program evolution over time for programs funded by the Department of Labor and others. I then review the cost-effectiveness of programs for adults and youth from the evaluation literature. I consider some other possible reasons for funding declines, and some newer developments in workforce policy, mostly at the state and local levels, before concluding with some policy recommendations.
• Living Wage Laws : How Much Do (Can) They Matter?
  In this paper, I review what we have learned about living wage laws and their impacts on the wages, employment and poverty rates of low-wage workers. I review the characteristics of these laws, predictions from economic theory about their likely effects, and two bodies of empirical evidence: studies across cities or metropolitan areas and those within particular cities. I conclude that living wage laws have modestly raised wage levels of low wage workers and have reduced their employment at covered firms, but that the magnitudes of both effects are likely quite small, given how few workers are usually covered by these ordinances.
• How Do Disabilities Affect Future Retirement Benefits?
  One-quarter of workers ages 51 to 55 develop work disabilities before age 62. Disabilities often force people to curtail their work hours, derailing retirement preparations. However, protections built into Social Security, including disability and spouse benefits and the system's tilt toward workers with low lifetime earnings, cushion the impact of midlife health problems. After other factors are controlled for, the onset of health-related work limitations between ages 51 and 61 reduces Social Security retirement benefits at ages 63 to 67 by only about 2 percent, much less than the impact on other retirement savings.