Public and Private Roles in Supporting Working Families: An Urban Institute Roundtable

Public and Private Roles in Supporting WorkingFamiliesAn Urban Institute RoundtableKARIN MARTINSON, PAMELA WINSTON, AND SUSAN KELLAMTHE URBAN INSTITUTE Copyright © 2007. The Urban Institute. All rights reserved. Except for short quotes, no part of this reportmay be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the UrbanInstitute.This paper is a summary of the May 23, 2007, Urban Institute Roundtable “Public and Private Roles in theWorkplace: What Are the Next Steps in Supporting Working Families?”The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization established inWashington, D.C., in 1968. Its staff investigates the social, economic, and governance problems confrontingthe nation and evaluates the public and private means to alleviate them. Views expressed in this report arethose of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute, its trustees, or its funders. Public and Private Roles inSupporting Working FamiliesAn Urban Institute Roundtable1While the vast majority of low-income parents today works steadily, many stillstruggle to make ends meet and address family needs. Many parents find itdifficult to support their families in jobs that offer few benefits or links to public sup-ports. The current patchwork of public and private programs, many of which are notspecifically geared toward working families, can create major challenges. At the same time, employers are balancing their financial and productivity objectivesin an increasingly global, competitive market. They must address the challenges of recruit-ing, hiring, and retaining a skilled workforce in the context of these competitive demands.U.S. public policies generally give firms significant latitude in their workforce practices.As a consequence, some firms choose to respond to global competition by lowering wagecosts, limiting benefits, and accepting high employee turnover, while other firms respondby offering higher wages and benefits but demanding higher productivity. Even withinthe same industry, different firms may make dramatically different choices. Given these factors, the debate about appropriate public and private roles in suchareas as provision of health insurance, narrowing the skills gap, and the need for paidparental leave appears to be intensifying in many states and in Washington, D.C. Manyresearchers, labor experts, and policymakers who in the past have focused primarily onpublic programs are now considering how both the private and public sectors can sup-port working families and, at the same time, encourage productivity and organizationalcompetitiveness. But questions remain about what supports to provide, the appropriatebalance of public and private supports, the role of public policy in encouraging or man-dating stronger private-sector involvement, and the level of public investment needed. To facilitate a dialogue on these issues, the Urban Institute, through support fromthe Annie E. Casey Foundation, sponsored a May 2007 roundtable, “Public and PrivateRoles in the Workplace: What Are the Next Steps in Supporting Working Families?” Agroup of about 45 business leaders, practitioners, national policy experts, researchers,and advocates discussed the problems and potential solutions, striving for constructivediscourse rather than a final consensus. “We need to develop a better understanding of the strategies for public and private partnerships,” noted Urban Institute PresidentRobert Reischauer in his opening remarks.After a introductory session establishing the policy context for the roundtable dis-cussion, sessions focused on four specific topics: (1) the circumstances and conditions oflow-income workers with families, the jobs they hold, the employers they work for, andthe communities in which they live; (2) strategies for building workers’ skills and help-ing them advance that draw on both the public sector and private employers; (3) the lim-itations of the employer-sponsored health insurance system for low-income workersand strategies for increasing coverage; and (4) policies for helping low-income workingparents better balance their responsibilities to their families and their employers. This conference report lays out the salient issues and themes that arose from theroundtable. It briefly summarizes papers that Urban Institute researchers presented toset the stage for discussion, and then delves into the ideas and perspectives of the par-ticipants on each of the core topics. It concludes with a summary of participants’ sug-gestions for possible future policy and research directions.The Policy Context: An Opportunity for Change? The roundtable discussion began with a general discussion about the struggles facingboth low-income workers and their employers, and the potential opportunity toimprove the