May 2, 2013. A new report from JobsFirstNYC and co-authored by James Parrott, Deputy Director and Chief Economist, Fiscal Policy Institute, and Lazar Treschan, Director of Youth Policy, Community Service Society, takes an in-depth look at both the supply and demand dimensions of the job market faced by New York City’s 18-24 young adult population. Barriers to Entry: The Increasing Challenges Faced by Young Adults in the New York City Labor Market looks at changes in the city’s labor market… (read more)

April 10, 2013. With policymakers in Washington calling for federal tax reform, the Fiscal Policy Institute said it is essential that members of Congress consider the beneficial long-term impacts of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) as well as these credits’ short-run benefits. In emphasizing the importance of making the current temporary enhancements of these credits permanent, FPI pointed to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that… (read more)

February 12, 2013. We have updated the Economic and Fiscal Outlook 2013-2014 briefing book that was originally released at FPI’s 23rd annual budget briefing on January 29, and submitted testimony by Carolyn Boldiston on the implications for Human Services of the Governor’s 2013-2014 Executive Budget and testimony by Frank Mauro on Tax Issues related to the Legislature’s consideration of the Executive Budget. We have also completed an analysis, with the New York Women’s Foundation, of the… (read more)

February 5, 2013. Submitted by Carolyn Boldiston, FPI’s Senior Fiscal Policy Analyst. Testimony includes: trends in public assistance participation and poverty in New York State, a review of New York’s historical utilization of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, a review of the state’s maintenance-of-effort spending, and recommendations for the 2013-2014 state fiscal year.

September 21, 2012. Data released by the Census Bureau yesterday casts additional light on New York’s high poverty rate and its extreme income inequality. The poverty situation is particularly dire in the Upstate cities and among children. When those two factors are looked at together, alarm bells should be going off in policymakers’ offices.

More than half the children in Rochester and Syracuse lived in poverty in 2011 and Buffalo (46.8%), Schenectady (50.8%) and Albany (37%) were not far behind. See Table 1… (read more)

September 20, 2012. After years of watching the number of New Yorkers without insurance climb higher and higher, we are finally seeing the trend reverse, thanks to health care reform and Medicaid. The data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau underscores the urgency for New York to implement health care reform.

According to the Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey data, overall health insurance coverage in New York increased slightly from 2010 to 2011, from 88.1 percent… (read more)

September 12, 2012. One piece of good news from the Census Bureau data released today is an increase in the percentage of people with health insurance in New York State and across the country in 2011.

The share of New Yorkers without health insurance dropped last year, according to preliminary state Census Bureau figures. Roughly one in eight New Yorkers did not have health insurance coverage in 2011, a decrease of three percent from 2010. A similar, though less pronounced,… (read more)

August 9, 2012. An op ed by Dr. Brent Kramer and Dr. Susan Birns from the Berkshire Eagle. Kramer is an adjunct assistant professor of economics at the City University of New York and a research associate at FPI. Birns is professor of Sociology/Anthropology/Social Work at MCLA and board president of the Elizabeth Freeman Center.

May 7, 2012. A new report from FPI looks at the importance of jobs in the nonprofit health care and social assistance sector in New York City, and examines how the hardships facing the city’s low-income population – the main constituency served by the nonprofit human services sector – have grown in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the weak recovery over the past three years.

• Full report
• Press release
• Companion report released by the Human

… (read more)

April 1, 2012. An op ed by Carolyn Boldiston, Poughkeepsie Journal.