The Center for Community Solutions is posing 18 questions for the upcoming 2018 election. These questions are based on the research that Community Solutions conducted and compiled over the past several years on our six policy priority areas. We pose three questions for each priority area, each of the questions and issues are explained in detail in PDFs.

Data compiled by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that in 2016, only 23 families for every 100 families in poverty received TANF cash assistance. When TANF was created in 1996, 68 families received cash assistance for every 100 in poverty. According to data from the Administration for Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in 2016, only about nine out of 100 families receiving Ohio Works First (OWF) had income beyond cash assistance. A family of three has to make less than $10,390 a year to qualify for cash assistance. Declining caseloads in Ohio, and nationally, mean that fewer and fewer families can purchase essentials, like diapers or feminine hygiene products, because they no longer have access to cash support offered by OWF. Read more here.

The Ohio County Fact Sheets highlight demographic projections, educational attainment, employment, income, poverty, health coverage, Medicaid, health indicators and more in each of the 88 counties in the state of Ohio.