Audio from the Urban Institute

Do Neighborhoods Matter?

George Galster explains how children are harmed by growing up in predominantly poor neighborhoods. He also recommends ways to improve federal and state housing programs to avoid high concentrations of poverty. George Galster is an Urban Institute Affiliated Scholar and the Clarence B. Hilberry Professor of Urban Affairs at Wayne State University.

First Tuesday: Who Moves, Who Stays, and the Resilience of Low-Income Communities

Community organizations, local governments, foundations, businesses, and social service providers rely on residential stability in their efforts to alleviate the plight of impoverished families in hard-pressed neighborhoods. While trading up to a better neighborhood may improve an individual family’s circumstances, frequent churning of residents may have negative effects for communities. A forthcoming examination of evidence from the Making Connections initiative, a decade-long effort sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to improve neighborhoods in 10 cities, will be the starting point for a debate about the intersection of poverty, neighborhood quality, and economic advancement.

Andy Burnham, M.P., U.K.'s Secretary of State for Health

In this special presentation, the United Kingdom’s secretary of state for health, the Rt. Hon. Andy Burnham, M.P., will argue that now is the time for England and America to share much-needed perspective and knowledge and to bust a medical myth or two.

The Financial and Economic Consequences of an Exploding Debt

The Congressional Budget Office's most recent long-term budget outlook declared that "current policies are unsustainable." Translation, according to tax scholar Len Burman: if we don’t change course, we're doomed. America will celebrate its tricentennial with IOUs 6.5 times its total economic output if current policies continue, CBO says, and that is under implausibly optimistic assumptions about the economy.

Senator Ron Wyden on Tax Reform and Health Reform

Mapquest the route to tax reform and health reform and all roads lead to the Senate Finance Committee. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of its health care and taxation subcommittees and chair of its global competitiveness subcommittee, has long been a proponent of making the tax code simpler, free of loopholes, and fairer to all Americans. Wyden will use the debut of the Tax Policy Center’s new Tax Reform 2.0 series to describe the tax aspects of the health care reform bill currently under debate in the Finance Committee and the alternatives laid out in his own health care reform bill, the Healthy Americans Act (S. 391). In addition, he will share his view of the prospects for comprehensive tax reform in 2010 and explain his own tax reform legislation, the Fair Flat Tax Act of 2007 (S. 1111).

Evaluating Performance: Lessons from Youth-Serving Nonprofits and Their Funders

The World Bank's East of the River Initiative provided two years of technical assistance to help four District nonprofits develop the capacity to evaluate outcomes. A new Urban Institute report, Evaluation Matters: Lessons from Youth-Serving Organizations, examines the agencies' progress and highlights the conditions and factors promoting and frustrating effective evaluation strategies.