Until recently, disadvantaged dads were conspicuously absent from public discourse about America’s high child poverty rate (19%). Welfare reform nudged mothers of young children into the workforce, but left fathers’ obligation to their children largely unaddressed.
This is changing. President Obama recently launched a responsible fatherhood initiative.
In mid-September, a group of top poverty scholars, policymakers and practitioners met at UW–Madison to discuss what can be done to require men to take both emotional and financial responsibility for their children—and realistic policy options for helping them to do so.
The conference "Young Disadvantaged Men: Fathers, Families, Poverty, and Policy" hosted by the Institute for Research on Poverty, featured experts who analyzed the poor labor market for these fathers.
The conference also focused on training and education remedies, disadvantaged men as dads and as partners, and promising child support policy changes to encourage payment, complications of high incarceration and prisoner reentry, policies that strengthen fatherhood and families, and income support policies for young disadvantaged dads.