Each student is expected to choose a policy designed to alleviate the burdens of poverty and inequality for families in the US and write an analytic paper on that policy. Students must discuss each of the following five (5) items:

• An overview of the social, economic, and/or historic circumstances that brought about the policy’s creation (1 page);
• The intention of the policy (1 page);
• The outcomes of the social policy since implementation, using statistics primarily (1 page);
• The strengths and pitfalls of the policy (2 pages);
• A consideration of how the policy could be changed and/or improved to more effectively reduce poverty among families (2 pages).

Students are encouraged to use concepts from the course, such as culture/structure, inequality, poverty threshold, mobility, as well as to cite references to course readings/films/podcasts. The length of this paper should be approximately at least 7 typed, double-spaced pages.  

In addition to being evaluated on the substance of your policy analysis, the technical aspects of your paper (grammar, spelling, proofreading, parenthetical citations, and bibliographic citations) will also be evaluated. Papers should be written using proper APA format (this includes margin width, font style and size, cover page, and citations). Your paper should include parenthetical citations and a reference list attached to the end of your paper. Parenthetical citations must be used to document all sources used in your paper. Parenthetical citations are used for all ideas that come from your reference sources.  Parenthetical citations for your Internet sources should never be listed by the web address.

Web citations in the reference must include the name of the organization from which the information was obtained, in addition to the Web address and of course the name of the article and author if possible (see APA guide to citing articles/websites). Your reference page should include references other than Web references – Wikipedia is not an authoritative source of academic information. Journal articles that are located online should be documented as journal articles (i.e., please do not list journal articles located through the university library website as electronic documents). You are allowed to use interviews for references, but these must be thoroughly documented (name, date, organization) and they cannot be your only reference.