Rhode Island is set to entertain the idea of tying cash and medical assistance to school attendance, The House Committee on finance will discuss the bill today.

We may have overlooked a key demographic shift as we stumbled into the 21^st century. At some point in the prior decade, poverty in the suburbs began to grow at a faster rate than poverty in central cities. The number of suburban poor grew by 64 percent between 2000 and 2011; that’s more than double the rate for cities. This new, dispersed poverty offers some fresh challenges for policy makers. Being away from the bustle of the city was always the point of suburban living but this creates a unique transportation barrier as the poor are now  farther away from their jobs and traditional programs which serve them.

Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) grew from 28 million in 2008 to 44.5 million in 2011 due to the economic fallout of the recession. Program growth slowed from 2011 to 2012, posting just a 4.2 percent annual increase. As SNAP enrollment rose during and after the recession, the gap between poverty and SNAP enrollment began to narrow. However, in 2011, the latest year for poverty data, per capita food stamp enrollment was still below the poverty rate.

Stateline Midwest ~ April 2013

Within a few months, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on two cases involving the volatile issue of same-sex marriage. In the meantime, two Midwestern states are being watched closely for the possibility of legislative action before a decision by the court.

A federal bill to require drug testing of welfare recipients was introduced by Tennessee Representative Stephen Fincher last week. In a move to answer constitutionality concerns, the bill proposes to require applicants to waive their Fourth Amendment rights and submit to drug testing before qualifying for assistance. States would be required to certify that they test at least 20 percent of applicants or lose 10 percent of their Temporary Assistance to Families (TANF) funding.

Almost every state in every region experienced increased poverty since The Great Recession. The only exceptions were North Dakota – where the mining boom has taken the state by storm – and the Southern states of Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma, where one might argue poverty couldn’t get much worse. Children continue to experience higher rates of poverty than the general population and seniors over 65 are considerably less likely to be poor. Regionally, the East and Midwest had lower poverty rates that the South and West.

Stateline Midwest ~ November 2012

Illinois Sen. Jacqueline Collins remembers when her legislative district on Chicago’s South Side had plenty of grocery stores and family restaurants.

When Gary D. Alexander took over as secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare in January 2011, he inherited a department with a $27 billion budget and more than 16,000 employees. Alexander discovered the department was fraught with waste, fraud and abuse, and regularly requested supplemental budget appropriations, Eisenhower said. To address these issues, Pennsylvania tried an enterprise-wide solution never done before in the health and human services arena. Thus began the Enterprise Program Integrity initiative, an East regional winner of The Council of State Governments’ 2012 Innovations Awards.