Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom of the Low-Wage Labor Market
A new book by UW Professor Jane Collins and Professor Victoria Mayer (Colby College), grounds an analysis of the forces that shaped the lives of working-poor families in the experiences of thirty-three women living in Milwaukee and Racine.
Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom of the Low-Wage Labor Market tells the story, often in women’s own words, of their struggle to balance child care and wage-earning in poorly paying and often state-funded jobs with inflexible schedules—and the moments when these jobs failed them and they turned to the state for additional aid.
Collins is UW–Madison Evjue-Bascom Professor of Women’s Studies and Community & Environmental Sociology, Chair of the Women's Studies Program, and IRP affiliate.
The authors of a new book about informing policymaking with research have devoted their careers to bridging the gap between the research and public policy communities.
Their argument—that research and policy ought to go hand-in-hand—has gained currency of late, and is seen by many as the only way to break the partisan gridlock that often paralyzes local, state, and national government.
UW-Madison Professors Karen Bogenschneider and Thomas Corbett have the rare perspective of scholars who have always had one foot in the public policy world, which they describe with wit and humor in their new book.
Bogenschneider is Rothermel-Bascom Professor of Human Ecology, professor of human development and family studies, research affiliate of the IRP at UW–Madison, family policy specialist at UW Extension, and executive director of the Policy Institute for Family Impact Seminars.
Corbett spent a number of years in a leadership role at the IRP and held an academic appointment in the School of Social Work (now Emeritus) at UW–Madison.