Policy Research
A _______ can help determine if a policy is consistent with established social welfare values or historical precedents.
What is a policy framework?
In an open, democratic society, ______ should reflect the interests of all citizens to the greatest extent possible.
What is public policy?
True or False:
A tenet of the welfare state has been the progressive taxation of income and its redistribution to the economically disadvantaged through social programs.
What is true?
By definition, a welfare state with a low tax rate is unable to generate revenues sufficient to level the differences between rich and poor; thus, the question of income distribution has become integral to the discussion of tax policy.
True or False:
State income taxes provide general revenues that can be used for a range of social programs, but this is not the only reason that state tax policy is important. State tax policy can establish an income floor for taxation or exempt low-income families from any tax liability altogether, thus allowing them to keep more of their income.
What is true?
Children made up ______% of the nearly 553,000 homeless people living in shelters or transitional housing in 2018. On a single January night in 2018, 111,592 children were homeless. Compared to nonpoor children, poor children are more likely to have poor grades, drop out of high school, become unemployed, be incarcerated, and be poor at age 30.31
What is 20%?
________ are useful in evaluating competing policies and helping analysts make recommendations as to which policy most effectively addresses a problem or need
What are analytic frameworks?
A bill becomes Law after it is passed by a _____ vote of each legislative chamber.
What is two-thirds?
Multimedia checkpoint:
Schoolhouse Rock How a Bill Becomes a Law: https://youtu.be/FBpdxEMelR0?si=739KHRY7NrAriOXu
The federal income tax was instituted after approval of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1913. A ________, in that the wealthy were taxed at a higher rate, the income tax was initially levied on less than 1 percent of the population and had a top rate of only 7 percent.
What is a progressive tax?
The complexity of taxation in an advanced economy invites reform. A frequent contender is reducing the myriad provisions to a ________ where the same rate is paid by all taxpayers.
What is a flat tax?
Assuming such simplification increases efficiency—to the point taxpayers could replace a 1040 with a postcard—a rate of 25 percent is typically proposed. Liberals are quick to point out that a flat tax is regressive in that it requires low-income households to pay a higher portion of income for necessities than upper-income taxpayers.
Some estimates are that the number of older adults in poverty will grow, as about _______% of middle-class Americans are expected to live close to or in poverty when they reach age 65.34
What is 40%?
The four sections of a policy analysis framework are:
What are (1) the historical background of the policy, (2) a description of the problem(s) that necessitated the policy, (3) a description of the policy, and (4) the policy analysis?
The policy-scape of social welfare is quite dynamic. Identify the two orientations that simplify the objectives of various interests.
What are institutional and residual?
To the extent that ideology is congruent with the primary political parties, it follows that the institutional conception has been advanced by Democrats, while the residual conception has been favored by Republicans.
The Social Security withholding tax, ______ was established in 1935. For employed workers, the withholding tax was initially set at 2 percent of the first $3,000 in wages, divided equally between employers and workers.
What is the payroll tax?
Since then Social Security withholding has increased to 12.4 percent of the first $137,700 in 2020; any income above that amount is exempt from FICA (the Federal Insurance Contributions Act), the withholding tax.
A more feasible alternative is __________, sometimes referred to as a general services tax (GST).
What is a value added tax (VAT)?
Introducing a VAT in the United States would be desirable, eliminating many specific taxes, such as the sales tax, gas tax, and the “sin tax” on alcohol; however, it would overhaul a tax system, which, however convoluted, has become an essential revenue source for local, state, and federal governments
Several factors contribute to rural poverty, identify 3.
What is lower levels of education, a shortage of highly trained workers, high numbers of low-skill and low-paying jobs, high levels of underemployment and unemployment, and an underdeveloped physical infrastructure.
Rural areas often have difficulty in attracting major industries, and the deindustrialization
True or False:
Despite its reliance on an analytic framework, social policy analysis is largely subjective.
What is true?
The governmental policy process also poses problems for administrators and practitioners when including ________ and _______ in their analysis.
What are social stratification and marginalization?
Multimedia checkpoint: https://www.ted.com/talks/alexandria_holder_the_duality_of_labels_and_how_to_use_them_for_good?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
A refundable tax credit, the ________ instructs the IRS to send a check to low-wage workers, especially those with children, whose earned income is below a certain level.
What is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)?
Other plausible tax reform options include (identify 2):
What is income tax rates, withholding tax rates, tax refunds, progressive wealth tax?
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the federal minimum wage is _____.
What is $7.25/hour?
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the minimum wage for waitstaff and others who receive tips is lower than the $7.25 federal minimum wage
Four influential factors to consider when engaging in an policy analysis framework are:
What are (1) the kind of problem or policy that is being analyzed; (2) the resources available to the analyst, such as time, money, staff, facilities, and the availability of data; (3) the needs of the decision maker requesting the analysis; and (4) the time frame in which the analysis must be completed?
The first woman elected to the House of Representatives was _______ who won a seat in 1916 running as a Republican in Montana.
Who was Jeannette Rankin?
As a social worker who had studied under Frances Perkins, Rankin voted for early social welfare legislation and against military expansion.
To date, tax expenditures have enjoyed bipartisan support, endorsed by Democrats and Republicans alike. Significantly, tax expenditures introduce the ________ as a major institution in the American welfare state, with specific funding streams exceeding parallel allocations from the ___________.
What is the Treasury and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)?
The ______________ consists of TANF, Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
What is the Social Security Act of 1935?
World (global) poverty refers to people in developing countries who experience extreme poverty. What is the amount per day that is referenced?
What is $1.90/day?
At higher poverty thresholds, 24 percent of the world lived on less than $3.20 a day and 43.6 percent on less than $5.50 a day. All told, 46 percent of the world’s population lived on less than $5.50 a day in 2017
Multimedia: New ways of looking at poverty: (1) New ways of looking at poverty - YouTube