In May, the Joint Center for Poverty Research (JCPR) capped off a busy year of public forums with two conferences and a policy briefing in Washington, D.C. They swelled the number of public events sponsored or organized by JCPR to 18 since last August, with two more policy briefings scheduled for June.

The first conference, "Rural Dimensions of Welfare Reform," held May 4 and 5, focused on the effects of welfare reform on rural poverty. The effects of reform, with its emphasis on moving welfare recipients into the workforce, may hold different ramifications for low-income families living in rural areas. Transportation, for example, takes on added significance when commutes are longer, as they often are in rural areas. Other topics discussed at the conference included issues of food security and Food Stamp use in rural areas, prospects for job-matching, differing barriers in the rural and urban areas to leaving welfare and its affect on caseload changes.

A second conference, May 18-19, presented research funded by the 1999 JCPR small grants program, funded by the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the Department of Health and Human Services and by the Census Bureau. Participants presented a broad range of poverty-related research, spanning the effects of minimum wage on fringe benefits; wage growth; child support enforcement; family structure and father involvement; the link between income and child development; families headed by grandparents; immigrants and public assistance; the Earned Income Tax Credit and welfare; workers with disabilities; and car ownership and employment.

The final forum, May 10, a research briefing on early childhood interventions, also in Washington, featured current research by Jeanne Brooks-Gunn at Columbia University, Janet Currie at the University of California-Los Angeles, and Douglas Besharov, at the University of Maryland. Brooks-Gunn discussed early childhood interventions programs, their structure, short-term effects on development, and the optimal point of intervention. Currie focused on the long-term effects and program costs of early interventions, and Besharov considered the policy implications of early intervention research. The briefing was jointly sponsored by Chairman Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.), Ranking Minority Member Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) of the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, and JCPR.

Last fall, JCPR presented three major conferences that focused on tax and transfer programs for low-income participants, early findings on the EITC, and states use of welfare reform to improve the lives of children and families.

Proceedings from the EITC conference will be published in September in a special issue of the National Tax Journal. The "Tax and Transfer" papers will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Public Economics. A volume of proceedings from the children and families conference, edited by Greg Duncan and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale (IPR-Education and Social Policy), is currently under review.

For a full list of presenters and links to working papers, visit the JCPR website at www.jcpr.org.

The JPCR newsletter, Poverty Research News, will also devote an issue to the "Rural Dimensions" conference proceedings.