Pennsylvania SelfSufficiency Standard Training Presented by: The Womens Association for Womens Alter

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The Self-Sufficiency Standard
A New Measure of Income Adequacy for Working
Families
The Self-Sufficiency Standard is produced in
partnership by Wider Opportunities for Women
(WOW) and Diana Pearce, Ph.D. at the University
of Washington. Pearce conceived of the Standard
while she was the director of the Women Poverty
Project at WOW.
April 2001
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The Self-Sufficiency Standard
This presentation covers

• Background
• What the Standard is
• How it Has Been Used

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Background
Wider Opportunities for Women is

• National local Washington, DC organization
  working to achieve economic independence
  equality of opportunity for women girls.
• Recognized for skills training models, TA,
  advocacy for women workers, encouraging
  nontraditional employment, its 500-member
  Workforce Network.

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The Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Project

• Provides resources TA to states to strengthen
  advocacy capacity for low-income families
• At work in IA, CA, DC, TX, NC, IL, PA, MA, IN,
  CT, NJ, WI, SD, NY, WA, CO, MT, UT, MD KY 35
  states w/ Self-Sufficiency Standards by close of
  2002
• Project is based on the Six Strategies for
  Self-Sufficiency

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The Six Strategies for Self-Sufficiency

• Targeting High-Wage Jobs
• Nontraditional Occupations
• Functional Context Education
• Microenterprise Development
• Individual Development Accts.
• The Self-Sufficiency Standard

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Current Focus of Our Work

• Implement the Standard in 21 new states
• Expand constituency of advocates using the
  Standard in local, state federal debates
• Document the experiences in the 1st 14 states
• Develop communications plan to build support for
  the Standard w/ media policy influencers
• Support alliances at all levels to affect welfare
  reauthorization WIA implementation
• Campaign to revitalize program and policy efforts
  to improve access to nontraditional jobs

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What the Standard is Compared to the Poverty
Measure

• Both the official poverty measure the Standard
  are measures of income adequacy.
• But the official poverty measure the Standard
  are calculated differently, and measure poverty
  differently.

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What Is the Poverty Measure?
WHO U.S. Census Bureau calculates
annually WHAT Different measures for each size
family number of children WHERE The same for
every place HOW Based on the cost of food WHY
Assumes food is 1/3 family budget
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What Is the Self-Sufficiency Standard?
Amount of income required to meet basic needs
(including taxes) in the regular market place
w/o public subsidies or private/informal
subsidies

• Public subsidies Food Stamps, Medicaid,
  subsidized child care, etc.
• Private subsidies free baby-sitting by a
  relative, food provided by churches or food
  banks, shared housing, etc.

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How is the Standard different from the poverty
measure?

• Poverty measure is based on 2-parent family
  modelassumes only 1 parent works in 2-parent
  families no workers in single-parent families.
• The Standard assumes that all adults work
  full-timeincludes costs of working, i.e.,
  transportation taxes, for families with young
  children, child care.

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How the Standard poverty measure are different
(cont.)

• The Standard is calculated differentlybased on
  costs of all basic needs, updated annually,
  allowing costs to increase at different rates.
• The Standard varies costs by the age of
  childrenespecially important for child care, but
  food and medical care costs also vary by age.

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How the Standard poverty measure are different
(cont.)

• The Standard varies by geographical locationmost
  important for housing, but also geographic
  variation in costs of child care, health care
  transportation.
• The Standard includes cost of taxes benefit
  of tax creditssales, payroll (Social Security),
  federal state income, Child Care Tax Credit,
  Child Tax Credit EITC.

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How the Standard is Calculated
Calculated for 70 family types using real costs
of needs, based on a familys size, composition,
age of children where they live. Costs are from
federal, national state data sources such as
HUD, USDA, federally mandated state market
surveys of child care costs national consumer
price surveys.
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How the Standard Has Been Used

• to measure policy outcomes for welfare and
  workforce development
• to demonstrate the impact of public policy
  alternatives
• to target higher-wage sectors of the economy and
• to change the way caseworkers provide career
  counseling.

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Measuring policy outcomes for welfare workforce
development

• Measures more than caseload decline
• Ability to assess

• whether families have enough to make ends meet
• how needs change as income changes
• how many people have needed resources.

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Example Are Families Making Ends Meet?

• Womens Educational Industrial Union report
  Where Massachusetts Families Stand shows how
  families are faring
• Compared the Standard to Census income data
• Broadens discussion about whether welfare reform
  is working w/ info on who is making it and who
  is not

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Demonstrating the impact of public policy
alternatives

• Can evaluate impact of current policieswhat
  happens as families move from welfare to work?
• Can evaluate proposed changeswhat is the impact
  of restructuring subsidy programs, co-payment
  schedules, implementing tax reform?

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Example Modeling Policies in CA
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Example Assessing child care policy alternatives
in PA

• Womens Association for Womens Alternatives
  assessed impact of proposed changes in
  co-payments on families costs.
• Modeled existing proposed co-paymentsand
  showed interactive effects of other income
  supports.
• Demonstrated changes would have substantial
  impact of adequacy of familys wages.

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Targeting higher-wage sectors of the economy

• Key component in Sectoral Employment
  Interventions.
• Benchmark to determine whether jobs will allow
  workers to cover their costs.
• Outcome assess the jobs sectors on which to
  target training counseling resources.

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Example Institutionalizing Sectoral analysis in
public policy

• DC Jobs Council won local WIA legislation (DC
  13-552) institutionalizing process for collecting
  labor market data that meets employer job
  seeker needs.
• Without law, data would focus only on jobs that
  are in demand.
• The Standard is the measure of how much income is
  necessary for families.

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Changing the way caseworkers provide career
counseling

• Self-Sufficiency Standard Budget Worksheet
  provide concrete information about income needs.
• Helps counselors individuals create income
  packages of wages subsidies in the short terms
  and focuses on long-term self-sufficiency.

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Example The Budget Worksheet, what it is how
it works

• Womens Association for Womens Alternatives
  piloted The Self-Sufficiency Standard Budget
  Worksheet

• Starts w/ the Self-Sufficiency Standard
• Lets individual plug in real costs subsidies
• Tests various wages ability to cover costs

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Other Uses

• Living Wage Campaigns
• Evaluate economic development proposals
• Guideline for wage-setting