Research

We estimate the distribution of life cycle wages for cohorts of prime-age men and women in the US. A quantile selection model is used to consistently recover the full distribution of wages accounting for systematic differences in employment, permitting us to construct gender and education-specific age-wage profiles, as well as measures of life cycle gender wage gaps. Although common within-group time effects are shown to be a key driver of labor-market inequalities across gender, important additional differences by birth cohort emerge with more recent cohorts of women delaying child rearing, and by implication the onset of child penalties in wages. These important cross-cohort differences help account for the stalling of progress in gender wage gaps over the past quarter century.

We examine trends in household disposable income inequality and potential mechanisms shaping inequality through changes to work, wages, earnings, marriage, and the tax and transfer system in the United States over the nearly five-decade period from 1975 to 2022. Overall after-tax and transfer income inequality increased more than 25 per cent since the mid-1970s, and by as much as 50 per cent when comparing the 90th and 10th percentiles. While there has been substantial upgrading in formal education credentials among both men and women – an inequality-reducing development – those with fewer credentials have increasingly been less likely to work and marry, each of which could result in higher inequality. The latter effects are exacerbated by those selecting into marriage and cohabitation being more likely to partner with those holding similar educational credentials and earning power. Moreover, the decline in work among the less skilled coincided with the transformation of the safety net to rewarding work. These demographic and policy changes have resulted in a pulling apart of the US income distribution.

We examine the responsiveness of the safety net to the Pandemic Recession and compare it to that in the Great Recession. Using monthly state-level administrative caseload data from five large transfer programs–SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, SSI, and UI–and measuring responsiveness by the state-level caseload response to cross-state variation in measures of the business cycle–we find that the safety net response during the Pandemic Recession was greater than occurred during the Great Recession for the most important recessionary-relief programs–UI and SNAP. But we find that the two smaller programs, TANF and SSI, were less responsive during the Pandemic, and we find that Medicaid caseloads are generally unresponsive to the business cycle. We also consider the effect of Pandemic state-level policies, such as school and business closures, on caseloads, finding that states with stricter government Pandemic policies had greater caseload increases.

We examine the contribution of the U.S. tax and social safety net to ameliorating racial and geographic household income gaps. Using nearly five decades of data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, we make a comparative assessment of after-tax and transfer Black-White and rural-urban household income gaps in relation to similar gaps based solely on household earnings. Our results paint a mixed portrait of economic progress of Black and rural households relative to their White and urban counterparts over the last 50 years. The tax and transfer systems in any given year provide substantial redistribution to low-income Black and rural households, which has resulted in a narrowing of level gaps over time. However, those same level gaps have been exacerbated in the upper tail of the distribution, suggesting the tax code does not undo the underlying economic forces pulling White and urban incomes apart from Black and rural households in the top half of the distribution. This is borne out in the stagnation of rank positional gaps across race and geography.

We review the literature surrounding the expansion of the Child Tax Credit and its effects on food and financial hardship experienced by households with children. The literature consistently finds receipt of the expanded credit is associated with an increase in food purchases and declines in food insufficiency and food insecurity. The effects of the credit expansion also vary by socioeconomic characteristics. However, there are important differences across studies in effect sizes, indicating the measurement of food hardship, timeframe of analysis, and data source matter in evaluating the effects of the credit expansion.

SNAP is the cornerstone food assistance program in the United States and has been shown to reduce the risk of food insecurity. Most research on the causal effect of SNAP on food insecurity relies on the 12-month food insecurity scale along with usage of SNAP at any point during the year. However, recent social surveys ask about experiences with food insecurity in the 30 days prior to the survey. In this paper we examine whether similar protective effects of SNAP against food insecurity are obtained whether using the 30-day or 12-month food insecurity scale using the December Supplement of the Current Population Survey for 2002-2019. Results indicate comparable average treatment effects of SNAP in mitigating food insecurity across both 30-day and 12-month reference periods.

This paper examines the characteristics associated with poverty and food insecurity among households ages 55 and older to better understand what drives the gap between these measures of hardship. The analysis uses data from the 2002 through 2018 Health and Retirement Study to assign households one of four outcomes: poor and food insecure, poor and food secure, nonpoor and food insecure, and nonpoor and food secure. Multinomial logit regressions of the likelihood that households will fall into one of these four outcomes show that poor health is associated with an increased likelihood that both poor and non-poor households will be food insecure, and a reduced likelihood that households will be nonpoor and food secure. These results highlight the strong correlation between food insecurity and health that goes beyond sociodemographic and economic factors. This information is important for policymakers, Federal agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, nonprofits, food banks, and other community-based organizations that serve food insecure households.

This study investigates recent trends in living arrangements among older Americans and how they relate to nutrition assistance program participation and food insufficiency. We specifically focus on the rising propensity for older adults to live with children under 18 and the decline in living in institutions. We find that both of these living arrangements are associated with SNAP participation and with patterns of food insufficiency. Using an event study design, we find suggestive evidence that living in an institution may alleviate food insufficiency. Seniors living with children under 18 appear to have rising rates of food insufficiency even before the period of co-residence, suggesting that other factors may be driving both food hardship and living arrangements.

This study examined changes in senior Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation and household food and non-food expenditures following the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) expansion in SNAP benefits and the 2013 sunset of the benefit expansion. Using data from the 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 Food Security Supplements of the Current Population Survey, we find that senior SNAP participation increased significantly from 2008, prior to the implementation of the ARRA to 2010 post-ARRA, with the largest change among the oldest seniors aged 80 years and older. Seniors using meal services like home-delivered meals or congregate meals at senior centers saw larger increases in SNAP participation than those who did not use these services. There were no significant changes in senior SNAP participation following the 2013 sunset of the ARRA benefit expansion. Expenditure data from the 2007-11 and 2012-14 Consumer Expenditure Surveys shows that, in contrast to younger adults, seniors did not appear to significantly alter their food expenditures in response to changes in SNAP benefits. Among non-food categories, the 2009 increase in benefits resulted in a significant increase of $164 in transportation spending among seniors but also a decrease of $87 in their spending on utilities. Unlike younger age groups, the benefit changes did not shift seniors’ Engel curve for food-at-home spending suggesting that, on average, SNAP benefits are equivalent to cash income for seniors. Overall, our results verify that SNAP has spillover effects on transportation, utilities, healthcare and other spending among eligible adults, well beyond its stated goal of supporting food spending.

This study examines the effect of Social Security benefits on labor supply and food security at the early entitlement age (EEA). The data come from the supplements of the Current Population Survey, years 2001 to 2017. The results show that Social Security benefits decreased food insecurity near the EEA, particularly during and after the Great Recession. The effects are evident for both low food security and very low food security and are especially large and robust for widowed householders.