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Much attention has been given to the large increase in safety net spending, particularly in Unemployment Insurance and Food Stamp spending, during the Great Recession. In this paper we examine the relationship between poverty, the social safety net, and business cycles historically and test whether there has been a significant change in this relationship during the Great Recession. We do so using an alternative measure of poverty that incorporates taxes and in-kind transfers. We explore the mediating role played by four core safety net programs--Food Stamps, cash welfare (AFDC/TANF), the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Unemployment Insurance--in buffering families from negative economic shocks. This analysis yields several important findings. Our most robust and important finding is the safety net is doing less to provide protection for the most disadvantaged. In the post-welfare reform world, TANF did not respond in the Great Recession and extreme poverty is more cyclical than in prior recessions. On the other hand, Food Stamps and UI are providing more protection-or at least providing no less protection-in the Great Recession, although these results are less robust across our different models. These programs are more likely to affect households somewhat higher up the income distribution; we find some evidence of a reduction in cyclicality at 100% poverty and little evidence about this at higher income-to-poverty levels.
Much attention has been given to the large increase in safety net spending, particularly in Unemployment Insurance and Food Stamps, during the Great Recession. In this paper we examine the relationship between poverty, the social and private safety net, and business cycles historically and test whether there has been a significant change in this relationship during the Great Recession. This analysis yields several important findings. First, the relationship between unemployment and official cash poverty remained remarkably consistent with historical patterns during the Great Recession. Second, the safety net programs receiving the most attention through the Great Recession (Food Stamps and UI) exhibit adjustments very consistent with their behavior during previous historical cycles. The most dramatic change in the safety net is the post-welfare reform decline of cash assistance in providing protection for the most disadvantaged. Third, changes in living arrangements are modest and for the most part in line with prior cycles. Thus on balance we find, as our title suggests, that despite the attention to the apparent differences in the responses of the private and social safety nets in the Great Recession, the relationship between cycles and economic well-being are as we would have predicted from the historical patterns.
The contributors in this book use administrative data from six states from before, during, and after the Great Recession to gauge the degree to which Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) and Unemployment Insurance (UI) interacted. They also recommend ways that the program policies could be altered to better serve those suffering hardship as a result of future economic downturns.
Millions have entered poverty as a result of the Great Recession's terrible toll of long-term unemployment. Kristin S. Seefeldt and John D. Graham examine recent trends in poverty and assess the performance of America's "safety net" programs. They consider likely scenarios for future developments and conclude that the well-being of low-income Americans, particularly the working poor, the near poor, and the new poor, is at substantial risk despite economic recovery.
Officially over in 2009, the Great Recession is now generally acknowledged to be the most devastating global economic crisis since the Great Depression. As a result of the crisis, the United States lost more than 7.5 million jobs, and the unemployment rate doubled—peaking at more than 10 percent. The collapse of the housing market and subsequent equity market fluctuations delivered a one-two punch that destroyed trillions of dollars in personal wealth and made many Americans far less financially secure. Still reeling from these early shocks, the U.S. economy will undoubtedly take years to recover. Less clear, however, are the social effects of such economic hardship on a U.S. population accustomed to long periods of prosperity. How are Americans responding to these hard times? The Great Recession is the first authoritative assessment of how the aftershocks of the recession are affecting individuals and families, jobs, earnings and poverty, political and social attitudes, lifestyle and consumption practices, and charitable giving. Focused on individual-level effects rather than institutional causes, The Great Recession turns to leading experts to examine whether the economic aftermath caused by the recession is transforming how Americans live their lives, what they believe in, and the institutions they rely on. Contributors Michael Hout, Asaf Levanon, and Erin Cumberworth show how job loss during the recession—the worst since the 1980s—hit less-educated workers, men, immigrants, and factory and construction workers the hardest. Millions of lost industrial jobs are likely never to be recovered and where new jobs are appearing, they tend to be either high-skill positions or low-wage employment—offering few opportunities for the middle-class. Edward Wolff, Lindsay Owens, and Esra Burak examine the effects of the recession on housing and wealth for the very poor and the very rich. They find that while the richest Americans experienced the greatest absolute wealth loss, their resources enabled them to weather the crisis better than the young families, African Americans, and the middle class, who experienced the most disproportionate loss—including mortgage delinquencies, home foreclosures, and personal bankruptcies. Lane Kenworthy and Lindsay Owens ask whether this recession is producing enduring shifts in public opinion akin to those that followed the Great Depression. Surprisingly, they find no evidence of recession-induced attitude changes toward corporations, the government, perceptions of social justice, or policies aimed at aiding the poor. Similarly, Philip Morgan, Erin Cumberworth, and Christopher Wimer find no major recession effects on marriage, divorce, or cohabitation rates. They do find a decline in fertility rates, as well as increasing numbers of adult children returning home to the family nest—evidence that suggests deep pessimism about recovery. This protracted slump—marked by steep unemployment, profound destruction of wealth, and sluggish consumer activity—will likely continue for years to come, and more pronounced effects may surface down the road. The contributors note that, to date, this crisis has not yet generated broad shifts in lifestyle and attitudes. But by clarifying how the recession’s early impacts have—and have not—influenced our current economic and social landscape, The Great Recession establishes an important benchmark against which to measure future change.
"Major subsidies and regulations intended to help the poor and unemployed were changed in more than a dozen ways after 2007. Economist Casey B. Mulligan argues that many of these changes were reasonable reactions to economic events, with the intention of helping people endure the recession, but they also reduced incentives for people to work and businesses to hire. He measures the startling changes in implicit tax rates that resulted from a labyrinth of new and expanded 'social safety net' programs, and quantifies the effects of these changes on the labor market and the economy. He also reveals how borrowers can expect their earnings to affect the amount that lenders will forgive in debt renegotiation, and how this has acted as a massive implicit tax on earning. He explains how redistribution in the forms of subsidies, taxes and minimum-wage laws profoundly altered the path of the economy and made the recent recession one of the deepest and longest in decades. The Redistribution Recession is a controversial, clear-cut, and thoroughly researched analysis of the effects of various government policies on the labor market. It offers ground-breaking interpretations and precise explanations of the interplay between unemployment and financial markets."--Jacket.
Many working families continue to struggle in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the deepest and longest economic downturn since the Great Depression. In Children of the Great Recession, a group of leading scholars draw from a unique study of nearly 5,000 economically and ethnically diverse families in twenty cities to analyze the effects of the Great Recession on parents and young children. By exploring the discrepancies in outcomes between these families—particularly between those headed by parents with college degrees and those without—this timely book shows how the most disadvantaged families have continued to suffer as a result of the Great Recession. Several contributors examine the recession’s impact on the economic well-being of families, including changes to income, poverty levels, and economic insecurity. Irwin Garfinkel and Natasha Pilkauskas find that in cities with high unemployment rates during the recession, incomes for families with a college-educated mother fell by only about 5 percent, whereas families without college degrees experienced income losses three to four times greater. Garfinkel and Pilkauskas also show that the number of non-college-educated families enrolled in federal safety net programs—including Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or food stamps)—grew rapidly in response to the Great Recession. Other researchers examine how parents’ physical and emotional health, relationship stability, and parenting behavior changed over the course of the recession. Janet Currie and Valentina Duque find that while mothers and fathers across all education groups experienced more health problems as a result of the downturn, health disparities by education widened. Daniel Schneider, Sara McLanahan and Kristin Harknett find decreases in marriage and cohabitation rates among less-educated families, and Ronald Mincy and Elia de la Cruz-Toledo show that as unemployment rates increased, nonresident fathers’ child support payments decreased. William Schneider, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Jane Waldfogel show that fluctuations in unemployment rates negatively affected parenting quality and child well-being, particularly for families where the mother did not have a four-year college degree. Although the recession affected most Americans, Children of the Great Recession reveals how vulnerable parents and children paid a higher price. The research in this volume suggests that policies that boost college access and reinforce the safety net could help protect disadvantaged families in times of economic crisis.
The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.
"Economic research on the efficient allocation of resources has a long history. Increasingly, attention has turned to inequality in the distribution of personal resources and outcomes, and whether individuals or children are locked in their respective places in this distribution or whether mobility is possible. Research focuses not only on measuring inequality and mobility, but on understanding its historical, economic, and social determinants, and how policies might affect these distributions. This volume explores the latest developments in our understanding of income and wealth distribution and mobility. The first section addresses observed patterns of income inequality and shifts in compensation and fluidity that drive or reinforce income inequality. The next focuses on wealth inequality, including the difficulties of defining and measuring wealth. The third section presents new evidence on the intergenerational transmission of inequality and the mechanisms that sustain these patterns. A fourth set of chapters studies the mitigation of inequality, including variations in intervention strategies across time and geography. Finally, issues related to using national accounting data in comparison with survey and microdata are examined. Lack of data, particularly wealth data at the individual or household level in most countries, presents a challenge. Momentum has been building to link multiple sources of survey, administrative and other data in order to mitigate measurement problems in single sources and to provide more comprehensive data on income and wealth"--
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Arab and Jew, an intimate portrait unfolds of working American families struggling against insurmountable odds to escape poverty. "This is clearly one of those seminal books that every American should read and read now." —The New York Times Book Review As David K. Shipler makes clear in this powerful, humane study, the invisible poor are engaged in the activity most respected in American ideology—hard, honest work. But their version of the American Dream is a nightmare: low-paying, dead-end jobs; the profound failure of government to improve upon decaying housing, health care, and education; the failure of families to break the patterns of child abuse and substance abuse. Shipler exposes the interlocking problems by taking us into the sorrowful, infuriating, courageous lives of the poor—white and black, Asian and Latino, citizens and immigrants. We encounter them every day, for they do jobs essential to the American economy. This impassioned book not only dissects the problems, but makes pointed, informed recommendations for change. It is a book that stands to make a difference.