California Policy Lab February 2023 Newsletter

The new California Credit Dashboard

The dashboard will provide a near real-time measure of Californians’ financial health and includes five interactive figures, sortable by loan type, borrower generation, and economic region. An accompanying Data Point highlights key trends, including a substantial increase in the amount of student-loan debt held by Californians, which more than doubled from $15,200 in 2004 to $38,500 in 2022. California Credit Dashboard and Data Point.

Increasing take-up of stimulus payments

Through this targeted outreach effort, nearly 430,000 California households were contacted about federal stimulus payments they might otherwise miss and were referred to GetCTC.org to file their taxes and claim the payments. The outreach led to between 631 and 2,864 additional returns that would not have been filed otherwise, yielding between $2.4 million and $10.6 million in total additional refunds. CPL collaborated with The People Lab, Code for America, and the California Dept. of Social Services on this research. Policy Brief

Termination of extended UI benefits

Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) provided additional weeks of unemployment benefits to workers who had exhausted their regular UI benefits. Governors in 18 states terminated PEUC early, citing concerns that unemployed workers were refusing to return to work because of PEUC and other supplemental UI benefits. However, CPL’s analysis found that the termination of PEUC led to a dramatic decrease in the number of workers who were receiving unemployment benefits but there wasn’t a meaningful increase in the number of people who became employed. Policy Report

Sharp increase in pretrial electronic monitoring in San Francisco

The use of pretrial electronic monitoring (EM) increased 200% in San Francisco since 2018. This increase was driven largely by the In Re Humphrey court decision and also by a County effort to curtail the jail population during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite its increased use, fewer than half (38%) of the people assigned to pretrial EM successfully complete their cycles. Policy Report

Report shows pandemic’s economic impacts on women

A report from the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls shows the unique economic impact the pandemic had on California women. CPL provided research to the commission to support their work authoring the report. CPL’s research confirmed that California women, who faced systemic inequities before the pandemic, were also uniquely impacted during and after the pandemic, because layoffs were concentrated in sectors where women are the majority of the workforce and childcare challenges were unevenly borne by women. CPL’s Chartbook includes some of the key findings from that research. CCSWG Report and CPL Chartbook

Expanded Child Tax Credit provided $3.8 billion to California families

One quarter of all children enrolled in CalFresh or CalWORKs in California (about 630,000 children) became newly eligible for the Child Tax Credit because of the expansion under the American Rescue Plan Act. Policy Report and Data Point

Welcome to our new colleagues, we’re thrilled you joined the CPL team!

Job openings at CPL

The California Policy Lab is growing — please share with your networks and help us find great talent!

1) Senior Researcher

2) Researcher

‘It is the obvious thing.’ The White House tries a new tack to combat homelessness

This article cites CPL’s research and partnership with LA County to use predictive analytics as a strategy to predict and prevent homelessness in Los Angeles. 

The Role of Social Safety-Net Programs in College Student Success

In our first blog post for the ARCC (Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges Network), we explain CPL’s work to better measure and quantify the role safety-net programs like CalFresh can play in supporting college student success. 

Losing pandemic benefits meant losing a lifeline for many Black and older people

This article covers CPL’s recent report about the impact of discontinuing the PEUC program. The report found that women workers, less-educated workers, older workers, and Black workers were most likely to be impacted.

Poverty drops in California but only because of child tax credit, COVID relief funds

This article quotes CPL Faculty Affiliate Hilary Hoynes and CPL Postdoctoral Scholar Brett Fischer and cites CPL’s recent report focused on the impact of expanding the Child Tax Credit.

Meet The Start-Up Founder Connecting Arrestees To Free Legal Support

This article about a new start-up to provide earlier access to legal representation cites CPL research focused on a pilot program in San Francisco to provide pre-arraignment legal representation. The pilot program doubled the likelihood of release at arraignment. 

Can AI help fix homelessness in San Francisco?

Janey Rountree is quoted in this article about the Homeless Prevent Unit pilot program in LA County that targets interventions to people at the highest risk of homelessness.

How data sharing amplifies benefits programs

This article about data sharing to increase benefits take-up cites CPL’s “Connecting Families to Benefits Using Linked Data Toolkit.”   

Is forced treatment for the mentally ill ever humane?

This article about CARE Court cites CPL’s 2022 policy brief focused on serious mental illness among unsheltered Los Angeles residents. 

New jobs, research and events: Join the conversation with us on social media.

On Twitter and LinkedIn we share timely updates like new job openings, threads on new research, upcoming grant and data opportunities, media interviews with CPL experts and more.