Research on Poverty and Hardship
Poverty
David Brady, Ryan Finnigan, and Sabine Huebgen. 2017. "Rethinking the Risks of Poverty: A Framework for Analyzing Prevalences and Penalties." American Journal of Sociology 123(3):740-786
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(Link) (PDF) (Replication Package)
Considerable attention focuses on the risks of poverty, defined as individual-level labor market and family characteristics more common among the poor than the non-poor. This article first develops a framework for analyzing the risks of poverty in terms of prevalences (share of the population with a risk) and penalties (increased probability of poverty associated with a risk). Comparing the four major risks (low education, single motherhood, young headship, and unemployment) across 29 rich democracies, we show there is greater variation in penalties than prevalences. Second, we apply this framework to the U.S. We show that prevalences cannot explain high U.S. poverty as the U.S. has below average prevalences. Rather, the U.S. has high poverty partly because it has the highest penalties. U.S. poverty would decline more with cross- national median penalties than cross-national median prevalences, and U.S. poverty in 2013 would actually be worse with prevalences from 1970 or 1980. Third, we analyze cross-national variation in prevalences and penalties. We find very little evidence that higher penalties discourage prevalences, or that lower penalties encourage prevalences. We also show welfare generosity significantly moderates the penalties for unemployment and low education. We conclude with three broader implications. First, a focus on risks is unlikely to provide a convincing explanation or effective strategy for poverty. Second, despite being the subject of the most research, single motherhood may be the least important of the risks. Third, for general explanations of poverty, studies based solely on the U.S. are constrained by potentially large sample selection biases. |
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David Brady, Regina Baker, and Ryan Finnigan. 2013. "When Unionization Disappears: State-Level Unionization and Working Poverty in the U.S." American Sociological Review 78(5):872-896.
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(Link) (PDF) (Online Appendix)
Although the working poor are a much larger population than the unemployed poor, U.S. poverty research devotes much more attention to joblessness than to working poverty. Research that does exist on working poverty concentrates on demographics and economic performance and neglects institutions. Building on literatures on comparative institutions, unionization, and states as polities, we examine the influence of a potentially important labor market institution for working poverty: the level of unionization in a state. Using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) for the United States, we estimate (1) multi-level logit models of poverty among employed households in 2010; and (2) two-way fixed-effects models of working poverty across seven waves of data from 1991 to 2010. Further, we replicate the analyses with the Current Population Survey while controlling for household unionization, and assess unionization’s potential influence on selection into employment. Across all models, state-level unionization is robustly significantly negative for working poverty. The effects of unionization are larger than the effects of states’ economic performance and social policies. Unionization reduces working poverty for both unionized and non-union households and does not appear to discourage employment. We conclude that U.S. poverty research can advance by devoting greater attention to working poverty, and by incorporating insights from the comparative literature on institutions. |
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Material Hardship and Housing
Ryan Finnigan and Kelsey D. Meagher. 2019. "Past Due: Combinations of Utility and Housing Hardship in the United States." Sociological Perspectives 62(1): 96–119
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(Link) (PDF) (replication package)
Millions of households in the United States are forced to juggle different basic needs. Housing and utility costs consume the majority of many households’ monthly incomes. Consequences for missed payments include large fees, utility shut-offs, and evictions. Either hardship puts households at risk of losing adequate shelter. This study examines the prevalence and persistence of different combinations of housing and/or utility hardship using nationally representative panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). It also predicts transitions into these hardship combinations following commonly studied household dynamics: income changes, household composition changes, and poor health. Utility hardship is both more common and persistent than housing hardship, and households experiencing utility hardship have more disadvantaged characteristics. Entries into poor health are the strongest predictor of hardship. Other shocks predict one form of hardship more than the other. Most notably, income losses predict housing hardship but not utility hardship. |
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Bill McCarthy, Angela Carter, Mikael Janson, Cecilia Benoit, and Ryan Finnigan. 2018. "Poverty, Material Hardship, and Mental Health among Workers in Three Frontline Service Occupations." Journal of Poverty 22(4): 334-354
(Link) (PDF)
Many studies document links between income poverty, material hardship, and mental health; however, we know less about the mental health consequences of within-person changes in income poverty and material hardship, particularly for low-income workers. We examine these relationships with longitudinal data from a sample of frontline service workers interviewed in two cities (one each in the U.S. and Canada). Mixed-effects regression models show that between- and within-person differences in income poverty are associated with changes in material hardship, and that between- and within-person differences in material hardship are associated with poorer mental health and depression.
Many studies document links between income poverty, material hardship, and mental health; however, we know less about the mental health consequences of within-person changes in income poverty and material hardship, particularly for low-income workers. We examine these relationships with longitudinal data from a sample of frontline service workers interviewed in two cities (one each in the U.S. and Canada). Mixed-effects regression models show that between- and within-person differences in income poverty are associated with changes in material hardship, and that between- and within-person differences in material hardship are associated with poorer mental health and depression.
Ryan Finnigan. 2014. "Racial and Ethnic Stratification in the Relationship Between Homeownership and Self-Rated Health." Social Science & Medicine 115:72-81
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(Link) (PDF) (Replication Codefinniganssm_rr.do)
Social scientists have long demonstrated that socioeconomic resources benefit health. More recently, scholars have begun to examine the potential stratification in the health returns different groups receive for a given resource. Motivated by fundamental cause theory, this paper examines homeownership as a salient health resource with potentially stratified benefits. Homeowners have significantly greater housing quality, wealth, neighborhood quality and integration, and physical and mental health than renters. However, there are compelling theoretical reasons to expect the health advantage of homeownership to be unequally distributed across racial and ethnic groups. Regression analyses of 71,874 household heads in the United States from the 2012 March Current Population Survey initially suggest all homeowners experience a significant health advantage. Further examination finds robust evidence for a homeowner health advantage among Whites, on par with the difference between the married and divorced. The advantage among minority households is considerably smaller, and not significant among Latinos or Asians. Conditioning on a broad array of observable characteristics, White homeowners emerge as exceptionally healthy compared to White renters and all minority groups. This leads to the unexpected finding that racial/ethnic differences in health are concentrated among homeowners. The findings demonstrate the interactive nature of racial/ethnic stratification in health through both access to and returns from socioeconomic resources. |
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Intergenerational Mobility
David Brady, Ryan Finnigan, Ulrich Kohler, Joscha Legewie. 2020. “The Inheritance of Race Revisited: Childhood Wealth and Income, and Black-White Disadvantages in Adult Life Chances.” Sociological Science 7: 599–627
(Open-Access Link) (Replication Code from Dave Brady's website)
Vast racial inequalities continue to prevail across the United States and are closely linked to economic resources. One particularly prominent argument contends that childhood wealth accounts for black–white (BW) disadvantages in life chances. This article analyzes how much childhood wealth and childhood income mediate BW disadvantages in adult life chances with Panel Study of Income Dynamics and Cross-National Equivalent File data on children from the 1980s and 1990s who were 30+ years old in 2015. Compared with previous research, we exploit longer panel data, more comprehensively assess adult life chances with 18 outcomes, and measure income and wealth more rigorously. We find large BW disadvantages in most outcomes. Childhood wealth and income mediate a substantial share of most BW disadvantages, although there are several significant BW disadvantages even after adjusting for childhood wealth and income. The evidence mostly contradicts the prominent claim that childhood wealth is more important than childhood income. Indeed, the analyses mostly show that childhood income explains more of BW disadvantages and has larger standardized coefficients than childhood wealth. We also show how limitations in prior wealth research explain why our conclusions differ. Replication with the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a variety of robustness checks support these conclusions.
Vast racial inequalities continue to prevail across the United States and are closely linked to economic resources. One particularly prominent argument contends that childhood wealth accounts for black–white (BW) disadvantages in life chances. This article analyzes how much childhood wealth and childhood income mediate BW disadvantages in adult life chances with Panel Study of Income Dynamics and Cross-National Equivalent File data on children from the 1980s and 1990s who were 30+ years old in 2015. Compared with previous research, we exploit longer panel data, more comprehensively assess adult life chances with 18 outcomes, and measure income and wealth more rigorously. We find large BW disadvantages in most outcomes. Childhood wealth and income mediate a substantial share of most BW disadvantages, although there are several significant BW disadvantages even after adjusting for childhood wealth and income. The evidence mostly contradicts the prominent claim that childhood wealth is more important than childhood income. Indeed, the analyses mostly show that childhood income explains more of BW disadvantages and has larger standardized coefficients than childhood wealth. We also show how limitations in prior wealth research explain why our conclusions differ. Replication with the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a variety of robustness checks support these conclusions.