Family Adaptations to Income and Job Loss in the U.S.

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study examines the extent to which families experience major economic setbacks and how they respond. Families that experience a substantial loss of income or work hours are more likely to cut back on expenditures, receive public assistance, experience divorce or separation, and move. No evidence that partners are able to compensate for a major income loss by increasing their work hours was found. Initial conditions, such as income and assets, the unemployment rate of the area, and race, affect how a family adapts. Families with fewer resources and those who live in areas of high unemployment are more likely to rely on public assistance, and they are less likely to move, increase the work hours of the female head of household, or cut food expenditures.     

Estimating the expense of a mandatory home-and community-based personal assistance services benefit under Medicaid

Personal assistance services (PAS) are essential for many people of all ages with significant disabilities, but these services are not always available to individuals at home or in the community, in large part due to a significant bias toward institutions in the Medicaid program. This study aims to provide an estimate of the expense of a mandatory personal assistance services (PAS) benefit under Medicaid for persons with low incomes, low assets, and significant disability. DESIGN AND METHODS: We use year 2003 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to estimate the number of people living in households who would be eligible, based on having an institutional level of need and meeting financial criteria for low income and low assets, combined with additional survey data on annual expenditures under Medicaid programs providing PAS. RESULTS: New expenditures for PAS are estimated to be $1.4-$3.7 billion per year (in 2006 dollars), depending on the rate of participation, for up to half a million new recipients, more than a third of whom would be ages 65 and older. These estimated expenditures are a tenth of those estimated by the Congressional Budget Office for implementing the Medicaid Community-Based Attendant Services and Supports Act (MiCASSA). IMPLICATIONS: Creating a mandatory PAS benefit for those with an institutional level of need is a fiscally achievable policy strategy to redress the imbalance between institutional and community-based services under Medicaid.     

Government Capital,Intimate and Community Social Capital,and Food Security Status in Older Adults with Different Income Levels

Whether government‐based forms of food assistance such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), communal efforts including food pantries, aid from friends and family, or alternative means such as gardening are the appropriate means to reduce the prevalence of household food insecurity is a continuous source of policy contention. To inform this debate, we examine the relative importance of these forms of food assistance and acquisition to a sample of U.S. older adults from the 2010 Brazos Valley Health Assessment of central Texas households that have been stratified by income eligibility for SNAP, low‐income SNAP ineligibility, and above low income status. To identify how membership in these socioeconomic groups constrains household capacity to acquire sufficient food to maintain an adequate and healthy diet, we explore the varied associations of assets received from government; communal and intimate social networks; and alternative food sources such as gardening, hunting, and fishing with household food security across socioeconomic status, while examining the importance of place of residence on the use of capital assets. SNAP participation was the only specific capital asset associated with all levels of food insecurity for both SNAP‐eligible and ineligible low‐income groups, thus emphasizing the continued importance of food assistance among poverty‐level older adults.     

Child care assistance and nonstandard work schedules

Child care is a necessary work support for many American families, but can be prohibitively expensive for those with low incomes. The federal government provides assistance through direct child care subsidies, but only a fraction of eligible families are in receipt. One factor that may limit access to child care assistance is work schedule. Research suggests that mothers with nonstandard work schedules use relative care more and day care centers less than those with standard work schedules. Research also shows that child care subsidies are disproportionately used for day care centers. This suggests that mothers who work nonstandard schedules may be less likely to receive child care assistance, but little empirical work addresses this question directly. Using data from a cohort of urban, unmarried mothers, this study explores the direct and indirect relationship between work schedule and receipt of child care assistance. The findings suggest that nonstandard work schedules reduce the odds of receiving child care assistance; a relationship mediated entirely by less day care center use among nonstandard schedule workers. The results imply that more flexible child care assistance is needed to meet the needs of these workers, possibly provided outside of the direct-subsidy system.     

Ausstiegsstrategien in EigenverantwortungSelf-Responsibility for Exit-Strategies

The German social security code (SGB II) explicitly demands self-responsibility of people receiving long term unemployment benefits (ALG II) to overcome the need for help. However, it is not sufficiently defined how this responsibility is to be practiced and what kind of assistance those people can expect. Especially families whose earned income is supplemented by ALG II not only have to meet the demands of employment but also the requirements of an activating labour market policy. At the same time, they have to coordinate duties of care and education with a prospectively changed labour market participation.     

The Receipt of Transfer Payments by Immigrants in Sweden

Using the native-born as a benchmark, this article examines the reliance of immigrants on Sweden's social safety net. Both in the raw data, and after conditioning on a number of explanatory variables, we find that there are differences between immigrants and natives regarding participation in the Swedish income security system. We also find that there are differences in this respect between immigrants from different regions as well as between more recent and earlier cohorts of immigrants. As regards unemployment insurance benefits and cash labour market assistance, no clear pattern can be discerned in the results. In the case of early retirement pension and social assistance, however, the picture looks different. Immigrants arriving at an early date from typical labour immigration regions are over-represented in early retirement. Immigrants, especially non-European immigrants with a recent date of arrival, are over-represented among recipients of social assistance. The overall conclusion is that the immigrants' total rate of participation in the income security system is determined by their rate of unemployment and their state of health. On the other hand, the distribution of their participation among the different components of the income security system is highly dependent on their length of residence in Sweden and where they come from.     

The evolution of retirement: results of the 1999 Retirement Confidence Survey

The ninth annual Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) shows continued evidence of progress in the drive for retirement income security for American workers. However, there are still hurdles to overcome. The RCS tracks Americans' retirement planning and saving behavior and their confidence regarding various aspects of their retirement. It also categorizes workers and retirees into distinct groups based on their individual views on retirement, retirement planning, and saving. The retirement envisioned by today's workers looks different in many respects from that now experienced by current retirees. Today's workers expect to work longer than current retirees actually worked before retiring--and many say they plan to work for pay after they retire. Twenty-four percent of workers reported that they are very confident they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, and 45 percent reported that they are somewhat confident. However, there are indications that many may be falsely confident. The good news is that 70 percent of Americans are saving for retirement, and a growing percentage (49 percent) are going further and determining how much they need to save to fund their retirement. The bad news is that 30 percent of Americans have not begun to save for their retirement, and 51 percent have never tried to determine how much they need to save. Employers play a major role in ensuring adequate retirement preparation. Forty percent of all workers said they expect that money provided by their employer will be a major source of retirement income. Forty-six percent expect the money they put into a retirement plan at work to be a major source of income. The availability of a retirement plan at work is credited by 48 percent of savers as motivation to save. While worker education is a point of emphasis among both employers and policymakers, more remains to be done. For example, 59 percent of workers expect to be eligible for full Social Security benefits sooner than they actually will be, and an additional 19 percent admit they do not know when they will be eligible. There is evidence that education can have an impact on individual behavior. Forty percent of workers receiving educational material at work in the last year said that information caused them to begin saving (19 percent) or resume saving (21 percent) for retirement, while 40 percent said they changed the amount they were contributing to a retirement savings plan and 41 percent changed the allocation of their money in a retirement savings plan.     

Estimating the Expense of a Mandatory Home- and Community-Based Personal Assistance Services Benefit Under Medicaid

Abstract

Personal assistance services (PAS) are essential for many people of all ages with significant disabilities, but these services are not always available to individuals at home or in the community, in large part due to a significant bias toward institutions in the Medicaid program. This study aims to provide an estimate of the expense of a mandatory personal assistance services (PAS) benefit under Medicaid for persons with low incomes, low assets, and significant disability.

Design and methods: We use year 2003 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to estimate the number of people living in households who would be eligible, based on having an institutional level of need and meeting financial criteria for low income and low assets, combined with additional survey data on annual expenditures under Medicaid programs providing PAS.

Results: New expenditures for PAS are estimated to be $1.4–$3.7 billion per year (in 2006 dollars), depending on the rate of participation, for up to half a million new recipients, more than a third of whom would be ages 65 and older. These estimated expenditures are a tenth of those estimated by the Congressional Budget Office for implementing the Medicaid Community-Based Attendant Services and Supports Act (MiCASSA).

Implications: Creating a mandatory PAS benefit for those with an institutional level of need is a fiscally achievable policy strategy to redress the imbalance between institutional and community-based services under Medicaid.     

The Role of Family Income in the Intergenerational Association of AFDC Receipt

Daughters from low‐income families who did not receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) are compared to daughters from low‐income families who did receive assistance to better account for family income in the intergenerational association of AFDC. The research models the timing of a daughter's first birth and, for those who become mothers, the number of years a daughter receives any AFDC. Women whose families received AFDC during their childhood are more likely to receive AFDC as adults relative to those women whose families did not receive AFDC. Controlling for family income in a more careful and comprehensive way than past research explains part but not all of the effects of childhood AFDC receipt. Among daughters from chronically poor families, however, parental AFDC use is not associated with additional years of AFDC participation. Although the present research cannot confirm or deny a causal role for parental welfare use, the intergenerational transmission of financial resources does explain part of the intergenerational association of welfare use.     

Employee benefits, retirement patterns, and implications for increased work life

This Issue Brief examines why policymakers are concerned about the trend toward early retirement and how it relates to Social Security, Medicare, and employee health and retirement benefits. It reviews the rationale for the effects of economic incentives on early retirement decisions and includes a summary of empirical literature on the retirement process. It presents data on how employee benefits influence workers' expected retirement patterns. Finally, it examines the implications of public policies to reverse early-retirement trends and raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare. An employee Benefit Research Institute/Gallup survey indicates that there is a direct link between a worker's decision to retire early and the availability of retiree health benefits. In 1993, 61 percent of workers reported that they would not retire before becoming eligible for Medicare if their employer did not provide retiree health benefits. Participation in a pension plan can be an important determinant of retirement. Twenty-one percent of pension plan participants planned to stop working before age 65, compared with 12 percent among nonparticipants. Workers whose primary pension plan was a defined benefit plan were more likely to expect to stop working before age 65 (23 percent) than workers whose primary plan was a defined contribution plan (18 percent). Expected income replacement rates effect retirement patterns, indicating that as the expected replacement increases, the probability of expecting to stop working before age 65 increases. Twenty-two percent of workers with an expected income replacement rate below 60 percent expected to stop working before age 65, compared with 29 percent for those in the 60-69 percent replacement range, and 30 percent for those in the 70-79 percent replacement range. Workers expecting to receive retiree health insurance are more likely to expect to stop working before age 65 than workers who do not expect to have retiree health insurance. Twenty-one percent of workers with retiree health insurance expected to stop working before age 65, compared with 12 percent of workers not expecting to receive retiree health insurance. The Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program depends on obtaining sufficient revenue from active workers' payroll taxes to fund the benefits received by retired beneficiaries. Funding the program in the past was in large part effortless because of the relatively large number of workers per retiree. Today, funding the program is a greater challenge because the ratio of workers to retirees has fallen. Policymakers have been able to agree that reform of the program is necessary for its survival; however, the debate over options to reform the program is just beginning, and it is likely to be a long time before a consensus emerges.     

The role of perception in the intention to change the family financial situation

The study investigates factors associated with the individual intentions to change the family financial situation of 337 farm respondents. The hypotheses are that intentions to change are influenced by (a) resource flexibility or constraints existing at the time of the decision situation, including off-farm employment, education, age, and household size, and (b) perceptual factors of perceived income adequacy, locus of control, degree of discrepancy between standard and level of the family financial situation, and dissatisfaction or satisfaction with the discrepancy. Older respondents and those experiencing more external control are less likely to intend to change. Younger respondents and those who perceive their incomes as more adequate are more likely to perceive that they have control over their situation. The lower the perceived income adequacy, the greater the discrepancy between standard and level of the family financial situation and the lower the satisfaction with the discrepancy. Significant indirect effects were consistent with theoretical expectations.Research was supported by the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station Projects 52-055, 52-054, and 52-058 and the Minnesota Extension Service. The authors wish to thank Jean W. Bauer, Ph.D., for research collaboration and Susan Keskinen and Cathy Schultz for research assistance.Her research interests include social, economic, and technical decision processes, discrepancies between standards and levels, and the interrelationship of work and family roles, particularly for farm women. Her Ph.D. is from Iowa State University.Her research interests in family resource management theory include social decision making processes and social decision rules, family life quality, and the economic consequences of divorce. Her Ph.D. is from Michigan State University.     

The earned income tax credit and union formation: The impact of expected spouse earnings

Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation from 2001, 2004, and 2008 and federal and state variation in earned income tax credit generosity over time, I investigate how changes in expected household earned income tax credit benefits associated with marriage affect cohabitation and marriage behavior among low-income single mothers. I simulate a marriage market to predict potential spouse earnings for a sample of single mothers in order to estimate the potential losses or gains in earned income tax credit benefits upon marriage. Using multinomial logistic regressions, I then analyze how the anticipated loss in earned income tax credit benefits upon marriage affects the likelihood of marrying or cohabiting. Results suggest that the average earned income tax credit-eligible woman can expect to lose approximately US$1,300 in earned income tax credit benefits in the year following marriage, or about half of pre-marriage benefits. Single mothers who expect to lose earned income tax credit benefits upon marriage are 2.5 percentage points less likely to marry their partners and 2.5 percentage points more likely to cohabit compared to single mothers who expect no change or to gain earned income tax credit benefits upon marriage. Despite recent policy efforts to reduce the size of the marriage penalty embedded in the earned income tax credit structure, these results suggest that the earned income tax credit still creates distortions in marriage and cohabitation decisions among low-income single mothers.     

The Earned Income Tax Credit and Rural Families: Differences Between Non-participants and Participants

Differences between rural low-income mothers who were non-participants and participants in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) were examined. About one-third (35%) of the 224 eligible mothers in a multi-state USDA study, Rural Families Speak, did not claim the tax credit. The EITC non-participants were more likely to be Hispanic, be less educated, have larger families, perceive their income as being inadequate, live in more rural counties, and possess little understanding of the EITC. Participating mothers were more likely to be single, food secure, and satisfied with life. Analysis of qualitative data revealed that the mothers had many misconceptions about the EITC. These findings assist in formulating policies and outreach efforts that may increase rural low-income families’ EITC participation.     

Do comprehensive schools reduce social mobility?1

This paper investigates the claim that the shift from a selective to a comprehensive school system had a deleterious effect on social mobility in Great Britain. Using data from the National Child Development Study, we compare the chances, for both class and income mobility, of those who attended different kinds of school. Where media attention focuses exclusively on the chances for upward mobility of those children from lowly origins who were (or would have been) judged worthy of selection into a grammar school, we offer more rounded analyses. We match respondents in a way that helps us to distinguish those inequalities in mobility chances that are due to differences between children from those due to differences between the schools they attended; we look at the effects of the school system on the mobility chances of all children, not merely those from less advantaged origins; and we compare comprehensive- and selective-system schools, not merely comprehensive and grammar schools. After matching, we find, first, that going to a grammar school rather than a comprehensive does not make low-origin children more likely to be upwardly mobile but it helps them move further if they are; second, that grammar schools do not benefit working-class children, in terms of class mobility, more than they benefit service-class children, but, in terms of income mobility, such schools benefit low-income children somewhat more than they benefit higher-income children - that benefit relating only to rather modest and limited movements within the income distribution. Finally, however, the selective system as a whole yields no mobility advantage of any kind to children from any particular origins: any assistance to low-origin children provided by grammar schools is cancelled out by the hindrance suffered by those who attended secondary moderns. Overall, our findings suggest that comprehensive schools were as good for mobility as the selective schools they replaced.     

Diversity in social support by role relations: A typology

Social support is fundamental for social integration and emotional well-being. One aspect of social support that is often the focus of attention is the size of a person's support network. However, additional complex measures of social support are necessary to capture qualitative aspects of support networks, such as the diversity in types of support available from specific types of alters. This paper presents a simple way to acquire this comprehensive information and a condensed way to represent the complexity of a person's support network so this information can easily be included in classic survey analyses. Log-linear latent class analysis is used to construct a typology of ego-centric support networks showing the types of support respondents can expect from alters with a specific role. Depending on the role relation for the five support items, this diversity can adequately be represented by distinguishing 2–4 types of respondents. For the role relation friends, we can differentiate between respondents who expect only companionship from their friends, those expecting emotional support as well as companionship, and respondents expecting no social support at all from their friends. For immediate kin, we find those with only emotional support, those with emotional and instrumental support, those with all types of support, and finally a group of respondents expecting no support at all from immediate kin. The approach presented in this article enables a more detailed measurement of the dimensions of social support contents by managing to compile the diversity by distinguishing types of respondents. Such typologies can easily be used as explanatory variables in subsequent analyses.     

The Modern Poor: On the Sociological Position of Social-Aid Clients

Abstract

The social-aid institution has been analyzed almost exclusively from a social problems approach, aiming at the understanding of social aid clients as a social problem. This article views them from a different angle, as a sociological category occupying a unique position in society. Following Simmel, we deal here with those who are poor in a social sense, i.e., anyone receiving public assistance. It is the acceptance of social assistance which makes clients into a specific sociological stratum. The specific kinds of rules and roles involved in any society's public assistance system are thus seen to produce the sociological position of the clients. With goalmotivated assistance, clients tend to be by-passed. With relationship-motivated assistance, the increasing formalization of modern society has made clients and practioners equal in one important sense—both are subordinated to the same rules and regulations.     

The impact of student loans on college access,completion, and returns

Nearly half of all first‐time undergraduates take a loan to pay for college, and many students will borrow tens of thousands of dollars by the time they leave. Low‐income students and students of color borrow student loans more often and in larger amounts, yet attend less selective institutions, are more likely to drop out with debt. Among students who complete college, those with larger amounts of debt may struggle to pay back their loans or to invest in a house, family, or future education. Researchers are just beginning to untangle how the availability and use of student loans affects college access, educational attainment, and life after college, yet this topic has important implications for economic inequality and social stratification. In this article, we summarize what is known and what remains to be investigated, about the impact of student loan availability and use on college enrollment, degree completion, and postcollege outcomes.     

The protestant work ethic,human values and attitudes towards taxation

The literature on demographic determinants of attitudes towards taxation was briefly reviewed. Whereas most previous concerned the relationship between such things as income, vote etc. and tax attitudes, this study examined the relationship between Protestant Work Ethic beliefs, social value systems and attitudes toward taxation. It was demonstrated that subjects who strongly endorsed the Protestant Work Ethic were more opposed to taxation than those who did not strongly endorse these beliefs. Further many of the instrumental and terminal value systems of subjects who were pro-taxation were significantly different from those who were anti-taxation. The results are discussed in terms of the psychology of lay-economic beliefs and implications for social change were noted.     

Marital Quality and Income: An Examination of the Influence of Government Assistance

Using data from a random telephone statewide survey in Utah, the associations between income, government assistance and six dimensions of marital quality were explored with a sample of 295 married individuals with incomes below $40,000. Results indicate that income has a main effect on negative interaction and feeling trapped. An interaction of government assistance and income on two dimensions of marital quality was found. Individuals that experienced the combination of earning less than $20,000 per year while receiving government assistance had significantly lower levels of overall marital satisfaction and commitment than individuals receiving government assistance with higher incomes and individuals who have never received government assistance. Implications and possible explanations are discussed.