Young adult poverty in historical perspective: The role of policy supports and early labor market experiences

Recent research using an improved measure of poverty finds that poverty has fallen by nearly forty percent since the 1960s in the United States. But past research has not examined whether this finding holds across detailed demographic groups who might be more or less vulnerable to poverty. This paper helps fill that gap, focusing on one such vulnerable subgroup: young adults. Using the Current Population Survey, this paper examines long-term trends in young adult poverty in comparison to other groups. In contrast to almost all other groups, young adults have seen no decrease in poverty since the 1960s. We explore potential reasons for this fact, finding that young adults lack access to benefits from government programs, and are increasingly unmarried, living alone, and disconnected from the labor market, factors that leave young adults more vulnerable than other groups to poverty. The findings have implications for how antipoverty policies might assist this vulnerable group.     

Occupational stratification,job-mismatches,and child poverty: Understanding the disadvantage of Black immigrants in the US

This study examines the implications of occupational stratification and job mismatches for the welfare of children, using data from the 2005–2009 American Community Survey. The results show that Black children of immigrants have household heads that are more likely to have occupations with low SEI scores than children in US-born households. More importantly, they demonstrate that intersections between parental job-mismatches and employment in the bottom rather than upper levels of the occupational distribution have important implications for understanding poverty differences among children. Job mismatches within occupations with low SEI scores are associated with greater poverty risks among Black than White, Asian, or Hispanic children of immigrants. However, racial poverty disparities are considerably lower among children with household heads in the highest occupational strata.     

How do they do it? The immigrant paradox in the transition to adulthood

How do children of immigrants consistently outperform children of native-born U.S. parents, in spite of lower familial resources? Using the Transition to Adulthood Study of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, children of immigrant and native-born parents completing high school in 2005–13 are followed as they move into the young adult years. Children of immigrants are more likely to enroll in college, be employed or in school, and less likely to have a criminal record as young adults or to have a child than children of nonimmigrants. This is not a result of immigrant parentage but due primarily to greater parental educational expectations; immigrants enjoy a differential return to parental expectations for boys' college enrollment as well. Reading skills and activity patterns in the secondary school years also contribute to better outcomes. Children of immigrants are better able to translate their reading comprehension skills to college or employment later on.     

Informal mentoring and young adult employment

This study explores the role of informal mentoring (i.e., developing an important relationship with a non-parental adult) in the transition to full time employment among young adults (age 23–28). Multivariate analysis of the Add Health data reveals that mentoring is positively related to the likelihood of full time employment, and the relationship involves both selection and causation processes. Entrance into the world of work facilitates the development of mentoring relationships, especially among youth who identify work-related mentors after adolescence. These relationships have the potential for promoting attachment to the labor force. Mentoring relationships that develop outside of work settings and during adolescence have a positive impact on the odds of full time employment. The receipt of guidance and advice from mentors, as well as access to weak-tied mentoring relationships, teacher mentors, and friend mentors all contribute to the increased odds of employment in young adulthood. However, adolescent mentoring may be less effective among young women than it is among young men.     

How far do children move? Spatial distances after leaving the parental home

This research used geocoded data from 11 waves (2000-2010) of the German Socio-economic Panel Study to investigate the spatial distances of young adults’ initial move-outs (N = 2113) from their parents’ homes. Linear regression models predicted moving distances by factors at individual, family, household, and community level. Overall, home leavers moved across very small distances with a median value of less than 10 km. Greater distances were found for well-educated and childless home leavers who moved out at relatively young ages from high-income households located in less-urbanized regions. In line with developmental models of migration, young adults stayed closer if the parental household was still located at their place of childhood. We conclude that considering the spatial distance of move-outs may advance our understanding of individual passages to adulthood and intergenerational relations across the life course.     

What keeps young adults in permanent poverty? A comparative analysis using ECHP

Previous studies suggest that there are strong differences in the rates of youth poverty across European countries. Rather surprisingly, it is found to be high in Scandinavian countries, and relatively speaking, lower in Mediterranean and Anglo-Saxon countries. This somewhat unexpected finding prompts the question whether the incidence of poverty is an appropriate measure of youth disadvantage. Instead of considering poverty rates we consider the length of recorded poverty spells, taking into account explicitly the temporal sequencing of the episodes of poverty. Using the European Community Household Panel, individuals are classified into different groups of poverty permanence, each reflecting severity of social disadvantage. Based on these categories we implement a generalized ordinal logit model to assess the various factors associated with social disadvantage among youth. We find that cross-national patterns differ from those found in previous studies. In particular from our findings it does not result that poverty is highest among young people in Social Democratic countries. Our analysis shows important gender differences, though they are not the same across the countries included in the study. For some countries it turns out that being a woman is a protective factor against long-term poverty. As previous studies suggests, young individuals’ living arrangements matter.     

The effects of parental marital discord and divorce on the religious and spiritual lives of young adults

A growing literature reveals that parental divorce and marital discord can have undesirable effects on the mental health and social well-being of children, some of which extend well into adulthood. Our study augments this body of work by focusing on the interplay of divorce and discord in shaping the religious and spiritual lives of young adults. Several discrete subgroups of young adults are identified in terms of parental marital status and degree of parents’ marital conflict, and multiple religious and spiritual outcomes are considered. Data are taken from the National Survey on the Moral and Spiritual Lives of Young Adults from Divorced and Intact Families, a nationwide US telephone survey of approximately 1500 young adults ages 18-35 conducted in 2001. Findings confirm that persons raised by parents in intact, happy, low-conflict marriages tend to score higher on most religious and spiritual outcomes. However, offspring from divorced families and those from intact high-conflict families differ on some outcomes, but not others. Indicators of traditional institutional religious practices and beliefs appear more vulnerable to the effects of parental divorce and discord than personal spiritual beliefs and practices. Overall, findings reveal a rich but complex set of relationships between family background and religious and spiritual lives among young adults.     

Industrial change, Hispanic immigration, and the internal migration of low-skilled native male workers in the United States, 1995-2000

Debates over immigration’s impact on less advantaged native workers often ignore industrial structure for creating segregated labor markets and demand for immigrant workers. We analyze population movements of less-educated foreign-born Hispanic, native-born Hispanic, White, and Black men between 1995 and 2000 using MIGPUMA-level 2000 PUMS data. We model in-migration, out-migration, and net migration for each group controlling for demographic composition, employment structure, change in employment structure, labor market indicators, and macro contextual measures. Results indicate positive significant relationships between migration patterns of all groups and support labor demand explanations of internal low-skilled migration emphasizing industrial change rather than labor competition.     

Single mother families and employment,race, and poverty in changing economic times

Using American Community Survey data from 2001, 2005, and 2010, this paper assesses the relationships between employment, race, and poverty for households headed by single women across different economic periods. While poverty rates rose dramatically among single-mother families between 2001 and 2010, surprisingly many racial disparities in poverty narrowed by the end of the decade. This was due to a greater increase in poverty among whites, although gaps between whites and Blacks, whites and Hispanics, and whites and American Indians remained quite large in 2010. All employment statuses were at higher risk of poverty in 2010 than 2001 and the risk increased most sharply for those employed part-time, the unemployed, and those not in the labor force. Given the concurrent increase in part-time employment and unemployment between 2000 and 2010, findings paint a bleak picture of the toll the last decade has had on the well being of single-mother families.     

Life course transitions in early adulthood and SES disparities in tobacco use

A huge literature has documented adult socioeconomic disparities in smoking but says less about how these disparities emerge over the life course. Building on findings that smoking among adolescents differs only modestly by parental SES, we utilize a life course perspective on social differentiation to help explain the widening disparities in smoking in young adulthood. Our theory suggests that achieved socioeconomic status and the nature and timing of adult role transitions affect age-based trajectories of smoking and widen disparities in adult smoking. The analyses use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which follows a representative national sample over four waves from ages 11–17 in 1994/1995 to 26–34 in 2007/2008. The results show divergent age trajectories in smoking by parental education and that achieved socioeconomic status and life course roles in young adulthood account in good part for differences in the age trajectories. The findings demonstrate the value of the life course perspective in understanding processes of increasing stratification in health behavior and health during the transition to adulthood.     

中国城市贫困问题研究综述

伴随着经济结构的调整,20世纪末,我国的城市贫困问题日益严重,成为了我国社会经济发展中的一个突出问题,合理解决城市贫困问题是经济发展的内容之一。本文从贫困的定义和度量、我国城市贫困的现状、原因及特点和城市居民最低生活保障制度存在的问题等方面对学者们研究的主要观点进行了梳理。在此基础上,指出解决我国城市贫困问题要强化政府创造就业的能力,关注陷入贫困风险高的群体,重视流动人口对城市贫困的影响,警惕贫困的城市化。     

Women's employment patterns and occupational achievements

This paper suggests that employment patterns and occupational advancement are related: Those less extensively and less continuously employed will have less investment in human capital, fewer opportunities to move to higher positions in the occupational structure, and, consequently, less gain in occupational rewards over the work life. Here National Longitudinal Survey data for women 30 to 44 years of age in 1967 are used to examine the effects of women's employment experience on their status gains from their career beginnings to 1971. A small but significant effect of employment experience on status gain is found for whites, but not for nonwhites.     

Measuring short-term labor force mobility with the Labor Utilization Framework

Continuing employment growth and declining unemployment rates in the U.S. labor force since 1982 have raised new questions about employment quality and shifts between adequate and marginal employment. In this paper, we use an individual-matched file from the 1986 and 1987 March annual demographic supplements of the Current Population Survey to examine 1-year transitions between labor force states measured with the Labor Utilization Framework (LUF). Short-term shifts between nonparticipation, unemployment, underemployment, and adequate employment—as conceived in the LUF—are characterized here for the first time. Our results suggest that the majority of recent job takers found adequate employment, but that new labor force entrants and the previously unemployed nevertheless experienced rates of involuntary part-time and low-wage employment exceeding rates for the labor force as a whole. Association models reveal wideranging differences in patterns of mobility and immobility across labor force positions. We find that upward transitions are largely counterbalanced by downward transitions, essentially yielding a one-to-one exchange of workers between specific pairs of labor force states. The analysis also indicates similarity across sex and race groups in patterns of mobility and only small differences in immobility. Mobility and immobility largely serve to reproduce from year-to-year existing sex and race inequalities in the labor force.     

Parental same-sex relationships, family instability, and subsequent life outcomes for adult children: Answering critics of the new family structures study with additional analyses

The July 2012 publication of my study on the outcomes of young adults who report parental same-sex relationship behavior raised a variety of questions about the New Family Structures Study and my analyses and interpretations of it. This follow-up article seeks to address a variety of the more common criticisms that have been raised, to offer new commentary and analyses, and to pose questions for future analysts of the NFSS and other datasets that are poised to consider how household dynamics are associated with youth and young-adult outcomes. The new analyses I present here still reveal numerous differences between adult children who report maternal same-sex behavior (and residence with her partner) and those with still-married (heterosexual) biological parents. Far fewer differences appear between the former and several other groups, most notably never-married single mothers.     

Population change and the legacy of slavery

Despite increasing evidence of a contemporary legacy of slavery in the US South, scholars do not have a clear empirical understanding of the ways in which demographic forces can alter local connections to racial histories. In this study, we examine the influence of long-run trends in population change on the relationship between historical slave concentration and contemporary black-white poverty inequality in the American South. We combine one century and a half of county-level population data, including estimates of the slave and total populations in 1860, estimates of black and white population change starting in 1880, and black-white poverty disparities from the 2011–2015 American Community Survey. Our results offer new empirical evidence regarding the enduring influence of racial histories over time, and suggest that white population increase between 1880 and 1910 was particularly influential in understanding the local connection between slave concentration and black-white inequality. Moreover, rather than disrupting the transmission of the legacy of slavery, results indicate that white population increase may have helped spread this legacy of racial inequality to other counties through diffusion processes. We find that while local historical legacies are persistent, they are not permanent, and population trends are a critical force shaping local racial inequality.     

Parental employment circumstances and children’s academic progress

Using data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation, we examine 4476 school-age children in 2569 families with matched pairs of married fathers and mothers to study children’s academic progress as a function of fathers’ and mothers’ employment circumstances, with a particular focus on involuntary employment separations. We draw on weekly work histories, collected at 4-month intervals, to characterize parental employment circumstances over a two-year period. Results find no significant associations between mothers’ employment experiences and children’s academic progress, even in households where mothers earn more than fathers. In contrast, fathers’ experience of involuntary employment separations is associated with children’s academic progress. On average, fathers’ experience of involuntary employment separations is associated with a higher likelihood of children’s grade repetition and suspension/expulsion from school. However, subgroup analyses reveal this association only in households where mothers earn more than fathers. We conclude that the adverse impacts of fathers’ involuntary employment separations in two-parent families have less to do with income losses than with family dynamics.     

精准扶贫视阈下河北省贫困地区妇女多维贫困研究

随着精准扶贫工作进入关键时期,河北省扶贫工作取得了很大的成果。而当前仍然存在着许多妇女贫困的问题,这严重影响了其脱贫工作的快速推进。本文在系统梳理国内外文献的基础上,通过对河北贫困地区妇女进行问卷调查,基于Alkire-Foster多维贫困测度模型,甄选出了导致妇女贫困的主要因素即教育、就业和健康。并在此基础上提出了解决河北贫困地区妇女贫困的路径。     

Unemployment and men's entrance into female-dominated jobs

Despite the contraction of many male-dominated occupations, men have made limited progress in entering female-dominated jobs. Using monthly employment histories from the SIPP, we examine whether individual economic conditions—such as a period of unemployment—are associated with men subsequently pursuing female-dominated work. Specifically, we ask whether men are more likely to enter female-dominated jobs after unemployment, compared to men who take a new job directly from employment. We find that unemployment significantly increases the odds of men entering female-dominated work among men who make job transitions. By examining changes in occupational prestige as well as wage differences before and after unemployment, we also find that entering a female-dominated job (compared to other job types) may help men mitigate common scarring effects of unemployment such as wage losses and occupational prestige downgrades. Accordingly, this study reveals a critical occupational route that may allow men to remain upwardly mobile after involuntary unemployment.     

Disentangling the role of income in the academic achievement of migrant children

Poverty has a well-established association with poor developmental outcomes in children but is often found to be a weak predictor of outcomes for migrant children. Building on theory focused on the developmental competencies of minority children, the current study used a systematic and novel analytic approach to disentangle the relationship between income and developmental outcomes for different groups of migrant children. Utilizing a population-based cohort of children in British Columbia, Canada (N = 23,154), the study examined whether income differently predicted the kindergarten to Grade 7 (K-7) literacy and numeracy trajectories of migrant children (economic, family, and refugee groups), in comparison to non-migrants. By applying Group-Based Trajectory Modeling (GBTM), the study found that lower income was generally associated with lower K-7 literacy and numeracy achievement trajectories. The relationship between income and achievement did not differ for migrant children in comparison to non-migrant children, with the exception of one sub-group of high-achieving economic class migrant children, which appeared to be less impacted by low income levels. Follow-up binomial logistic regression analysis found that parental education levels at migration and English language ability predicted which migrant children would be high literacy and numeracy achievers despite low income. The results suggest that basic associations between poverty and the outcomes of migrant children mask an underlying complexity: For most migrant children, poverty was just as predictive of detrimental academic outcomes as it was for non-migrant children and being in the exceptional sub-group of high-achieving, low-income migrant children was partly accounted for by other protective factors.     

Career pathways for temporary workers: Exploring heterogeneous mobility dynamics with sequence analysis

Because temporary jobs are time-delimited, their implications for workers’ economic security depend not only on their current characteristics, but also their place in longer-term patterns of mobility. Past research has typically asked whether temporary jobs are a bridge to better employment or trap workers in ongoing insecurity, investigating this question by analyzing single transitions. We demonstrate that this approach is ill-suited to assessing the often more complex and turbulent employment patterns characteristic of temporary workers. Our analysis instead employs sequence methods to compare a representative sample of temporary workers’ month-by-month mobility patterns through 8 potential (non)employment states over five years. We derive a typology of trajectories and describe their relative precariousness in relation to employment stability and wage and earnings levels and growth. While some of the pathways correspond quite closely to frameworks used by past research, others reveal new and important distinctions. Multinomial logit models reveal job, employer, and worker characteristics associated with different pathways. Age, gender, and type of temporary work stand out as important factors shaping subsequent mobility patterns.