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This chapter introduces the major themes of the volume by describing recent changes to safety-net policies in the United States. In early 2021, the United States implemented a revamped and greatly expanded federal Child Tax Credit that removed the requirement that parents have earnings in order to receive the payments. Severing this connection to work essentially reversed a key tenet of American welfare policy that had been in place since the enactment of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in 1996. The chapter then discusses the divergent trend in many European counties that have pursued policies designed to discourage long-term recipiency and encourage work and other work-related behaviors (“activation”) and extended them beyond the US model. The chapter concludes by summarizing the chapters in the volume and identifying how these trends are manifest in different areas of countries’ social safety nets including unemployment insurance, disability benefits, social assistance, and public employment services.

The official poverty measure of the United States federal government is the most commonly used indicator of the material well-being of low-income Americans. In 1969, Mollie Orshansky’s simple formula was adopted by the federal government as the official metric by which to determine poverty status. The well-being of low-income Americans, of course, is the main reason why we are worried about poverty status. Single-parent families are a major cause of poverty and, according to many analysts, also a major consequence of poverty. In any event, even with Obamacare’s unprecedented subsidies, health care costs will continue to rise unless effective counter-measures are adopted, worsening the employment and earnings prospects of most Americans, especially low-income workers. An aging population means higher taxes on young workers to pay for the elderly’s underfunded public and private retirement systems, including Medicare and Medicaid, that threaten sharply higher taxes on all American workers.

Since its creation, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has changed from an antihunger program to an income-supplementation program. Because the program (and its predecessor Food Stamp Program) was not designed for this purpose, the result is a program that has many unintended and, many believe, negative effects. The key challenge is to modernize a massive income support program that started as a small food assistance program. The author proposes an effort to rationalize the current patchwork of programs that make up the U.S. safety net—in a way that balances what looks to be long-term weak demand for labor with the need to minimize the work and marriage disincentives in current law.

International migration has reached new heights since the 1960s. Altogether, some 215 million people live in countries other than their countries of birth, and according to surveys, another 700 million say they would leave their homes and move to another country if they could. Nations-both sending and receiving-have responded to this growing international migrant flow with new laws and domestic programs. In receiving countries, they include laws and programs to control entry, encourage high-skilled immigration, develop refugee policy, and speed assimilation. In sending countries, governments are implementing and experimenting with new policies that link migrant diasporas back to their home countries culturally or economically-or both. This volume contains a series of thoughtful analyses of some of the most critical issues raised in both receiving and sending countries, including US immigration policy, European high skilled labor programs, the experiences of migrants to the Gulf States, the impact of immigration on student educational achievement, and how post-conflict nations connect with their diasporas. We hope that the volume helps readers draw lessons for their own countries, and, hence, is offered in the spirit of mutual learning within a continued international dialogue of research and analysis on migration. Available in OSO: Contributors to this volume - Ellen L. Berg Department of History University of Maryland College Park, Maryland, United States Douglas J. Besharov School of Public Policy University of Maryland College Park, Maryland, United States Ozge Bilgili Maastricht Graduate School of Governance and UNU-Merit Maastricht University Maastricht, the Netherlands Mary E. Breeding Independent Evaluation Group World Bank Washington, DC, United States Dylan Conger Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration George Washington University Washington, DC, United States Gerard-Rene de Groot Faculty of Law Maastricht University Maastricht, the Netherlands Manon de Heus Independent writer and journalist Berlin, Germany Jaap Dronkers School of Business and Economics Maastricht University Maastricht, the Netherlands Katharina Eisele Faculty of Law Maastricht University Maastricht, the Netherlands Ahmed Mustafa Elhussein Mansour Department of Political Science United Arab Emirates University Al Ain, United Arab Emirates Neli Esipova Gallup Princeton, New Jersey, United States Sonja Fransen Maastricht Graduate School of Governance Maastricht University Maastricht, the Netherlands Metka Hercog Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology University of Basel Basel, Switzerland Rebecca Hinze-Pifer Harris School of Public Policy University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois, United States Binod Khadria School of Social Sciences Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, India Katie Kuschminder Maastricht Graduate School of Governance Maastricht University Maastricht, the Netherlands Mark H. Lopez Pew Research Center Washington, DC, United States Eileen Patten Pew Research Center Washington, DC, United States Julie Ray Gallup Omaha, Nebraska, United States Andrew Selee Wilson Center Washington, DC, United States Melissa Siegel Maastricht Graduate School of Governance Maastricht University Maastricht, the Netherlands Rajesh Srinivasan Gallup Princeton, New Jersey, United States Roberto Suro Price School of Public Policy University of Southern California Los Angeles, California, United States Maarten Peter Vink Department of Political Science Maastricht University Maastricht, the Netherlands Silja Weyel Maastricht Graduate School of Governance Maastricht University Maastricht, the Netherlands Anja Wiesbrock Research Council of Norway Lysaker, Norway