Research Roundup: Identifying Obstacles that Hinder Voting, GDP Growth Report, Gender Based Wage Discrimination, New Health Care

Access to Democracy: Identifying Obstacles Hindering the Right to Vote - Women's Voices Women's Vote has compiled a very comprehensive guide to the disparate laws that control access to voting in the states, with a focus on their disenfranchising effects.  The report includes data on the current voting rules for all states, and the appendices are a particularly handy resource.

Unusually Bad and Getting Worse - This week's report on GDP growth highlights that the United States is mired in an unusually bad and steep recession, far worse as this EPI Snapshot shows than the average of recessions since World War II. See chart at right.

Why Aren’t We There Yet? - With women in the United States still earning only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, this Center for American Progress report highlights the losses from pay discrimination to women over their lifetimes, from pay to benefits.  The report emphasizes that it's not just the career women choose that leads to this pay discrimination but that discrimination persists within the same careers and professions.

New Health Care Reform Strategies:

• States Act to Help People Laid Off from Small Firms: More Needs to Be Done - While a few states have enacted reforms to allow employees laid off by small businesses to take advantage of new rules subsidising the COBRA health care costs for those laid off workers, this Families USA report outlines what more needs to be done in states, both to extend help and improve existing programs.

• Health Insurance Exchanges: Organizing Health Insurance Marketplaces to Promote Health Reform Goals - The Urban Institute outlines how a health insurance exchange coordinate tasks and guide markets to end discrimination based on health, control costs, promote transparency, and encourage more affordable coverage options.

• Changes in Children’s Health Legislation Can Reduce Harmful Impact of Documentation Requirement  - The Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA) enacted in February contains several provisions to reduce the harmful impact of Medicaid’s citizenship documentation requirement, which has caused many eligible citizen children to lose or be denied coverage since its 2006 enactment.  This Center for Budget and Policy Priorities report highlights what states can do to implement these changes.

Sales Tax Decline in Late 2008 Was the Worst in 50 Years: Early Data for 2009 Show Further, Sharp Drop in Tax Revenues for Most States - State tax collections for late 2008 dropped by 4 percent nationwide--with dips in 41 states-- with the drop in state sales taxes being the worst in a half-century, according to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.

Realigning Resources for District Transformation - This report by the Center for American Progress highlights how states can take advantage of recovery act funds to advance a strategic agenda to align and fundamentally restructure their use of resources to improve academic achievement for all students.