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Objectives Previous research in the United States suggests contextual income mobility may play a role in explaining the disparities between life expectancy in the United States and peer countries. This article aims to extend previous research by estimating the consequences of average individual exposure to mobility regimes during childhood and adolescence on adult health. Methods This study draws its data from two longitudinal datasets that track the county of residence of respondents during childhood and adolescence, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. We implement marginal structural models to assess the association of the average exposure to county income mobility on five health outcomes and behaviors. Results The results are only partially consistent with a systematic association between exposure to income mobility and health outcomes. Evidence obtained from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth suggests less income mobility might increase the probability of smoking by age 30. Discussion The paper provides a precise assessment of the hypothesis that childhood exposure to income mobility regimes may influence health status through behavior later in life and contribute to longevity gaps. Only partial evidence on smoking suggests an association between income mobility and health, so we discuss potential reasons for the disparities in results with previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, large parts of the economy were locked down and, as a result, households' income risk rose sharply. At the same time, policy makers put forward the largest stimulus package in history. In the United States it amounted to $2 trillion, a quarter of which represented transfer payments to households. To the extent that such transfers were (i) announced in advance and (ii) conditional on recipients being unemployed, they mitigated income risk associated with the lockdown—in contrast to unconditional transfers. We develop a baseline scenario for a COVID-19 recession in a medium-scale heterogeneous agent new Keynesian model and use counterfactuals to quantify the impact of transfers. For the short run, we find large differences in the transfer multiplier: it is negligible for unconditional transfers and about unity for conditional transfers. Overall, we find that the transfers reduced the output loss due to the pandemic by some two percentage points at its trough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between financial stress and the working class in the USA. Employing a financial stress index created from the Survey of Consumer Finances, I show that working class households are nearly twice as likely to be financially stressed than wealthier non-working class households from 1992 to 2016. A possible explanation of this result could be that the financial expropriation of personal income among the working class has the effect of increasing that group's financial stress relative to wealthier classes. Working class households in the USA have struggled to afford means of subsistence in lieu of lacklustre wage growth and a tattered safety net. Financial expropriation of these households has operated in tandem with this precarity, increasing financial stress in a time of financialised capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives Reverse mortgages are loans that allow older homeowners to borrow from their home equity with no repayment due until the borrower dies or moves out of the home. We currently know very little about how homeowners evaluate and experience reverse mortgages as solutions to their financial and housing needs in later life. Furthermore, despite an increasingly diverse population of reverse mortgage borrowers, we know little about how social inequalities may contribute to reverse mortgage decisions and their outcomes. In this paper, we examine reverse mortgage decision-making and experiences in a racially and economically diverse sample of older US homeowners. Research Design and Methods We conducted 44 in-depth interviews with older homeowners who were considering or who had obtained a reverse mortgage loan. We inductively and iteratively developed a thematic coding scheme that was applied to all interview transcripts. Results Our analysis produced a dichotomous schema of reverse mortgage decision making that was shaped by social and economic opportunities and constraints. For some participants, reverse mortgages represented strategic tools used to maximize home equity and its benefits. For others, it was an option of last resort to which participants turned when faced with the imminent loss of their home. Discussion and Implications Focusing on reverse mortgages, our analysis suggests way that social inequalities may be reproduced through financial decisions and the unequal landscapes of opportunity in which they are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stratification and inequality are among the most central concepts in sociology, and although related, they are fundamentally distinct: inequality refers to the extent to which resources are distributed unevenly across individuals or between population subgroups, whereas stratification refers to the extent to which population subgroups occupy distinct hierarchical layers within an overall resource distribution. Despite the centrality of stratification in theories of class structure, prior empirical studies have focused exclusively on measures of inequality, which do not accurately capture the degree of class stratification and suffer from a variety of methodological limitations. In this paper, we employ a novel rank-based index of stratification to measure the degree to which occupational classes inhabit distinct, non-overlapping, and hierarchically arranged layers in the distribution of personal market income. The stratification index is nonparametric, both scale and translation invariant, and independent of the level of inequality. Based on this index, our results show that the US income distribution is highly stratified by occupational class and that the degree of class stratification increased substantially from 1980 to 2016. Moreover, we find that this trend is almost entirely due to growing stratification among aggregate occupational classes rather than among the disaggregate occupations nested within them. Finally, a set of counterfactual analyses indicate that the rise of occupational class stratification is driven by increases in the income returns to education, deunionization, and deindustrialization, although the relative importance of these factors varies by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 witnessed a significant contraction in US consumption spending, as households began deleveraging following a period marked by historically high levels of household borrowing. These events call into question the canonical life-cycle theory of consumption, with its benign view of debt as a neutral instrument of optimal intertemporal expenditure smoothing. This paper draws attention to an alternative, post-Keynesian account of consumption spending in which current income, household borrowing and household indebtedness all affect current consumption. Central to the analysis is an empirical investigation of US consumption spending since the 1950s. The results of this inquiry cast doubt on the life-cycle hypothesis, but are congruent with the alternative, post-Keynesian account of consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper investigates the relationship between income inequality and future income growth rates of households at different points of the income distribution. The analysis uses micro-census data from U.S. states covering the period from 1960 to 2010, and controls for exposure to imports from China and share of routine jobs, among other variables. It finds evidence that high levels of inequality reduce the income growth of the poor but, if anything, help the growth of the rich. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the economic consequences to U.S. natives of the growing diversity of American cities? Is their productivity or utility affected by cultural diversity as measured by diversity of countries of birth of U.S. residents? We document in this paper a very robust correlation: US-born citizens living in metropolitan areas where the share of foreign-born increased between 1970 and 1990, experienced a significant increase in their wage and in the rental price of their housing. Such finding is economically significant and survives omitted variable bias and endogeneity bias. As people and firms are mobile across cities in the long run we argue that, in equilibrium, these correlations are consistent with a net positive effect of cultural diversity on the productivity of natives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely recognized that, on average, children from poorer backgrounds have worse educational outcomes than their better-off peers. There is less evidence on how this relationship has changed over time and, indeed, what exactly leads to these inequalities. In this paper we demonstrate that the correlation between family background (as measured by family income) and educational attainment has been rising between children born in the late 1950s and those born two decades later. We then consider the extent to which these associations are due to the causal effects of income rather than the result of other dimensions of family background. We review the approaches taken to answering this question, drawing mainly on the US literature, and then present our own evidence from the UK, discussing the plausible range for the true impact of income on education. Our results indicate that income has a causal relationship with educational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In many countries, student grants, tuition fees, and subsidized loans depend on parental income. This paper examines the efficiency and distributional effects of such conditioning, and assesses whether it is optimal practice when the government wants to reduce after-tax income inequality in the most efficient manner. Increasing the mean level of education among the work-force compresses wage differentials by level of education and thereby the pre-tax income distribution. Hence, subsidizing education may be part of an optimal redistribution policy. However, education subsidies mainly benefit high-ability students, limiting their redistributive virtues. Conditioning education subsidies on parental income may enable the government to reduce inframarginal subsidies, mainly benefiting high-ability students, while preserving the marginal subsidy, and thus the favourable effect on the mean education level which leads to wage compression. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the family income—college enrolment relationship and the evidence on credit constraints in post–secondary schooling. We distinguish short run liquidity constraints from the long term factors that promote cognitive and noncognitive ability. Long run factors crystallised in ability are the major determinants of the family income — schooling relationship, although there is some evidence that up to 8% of the total US population is credit constrained in a short run sense. Evidence that IV estimates of the returns to schooling exceed OLS estimates is sometimes claimed to support the existence of substantial credit constraints. This argument is critically examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents changing inequality in employer-provided fringe benefits in the United States using much more comprehensive data than previously available. Inequality growth in broader measures of compensation slightly exceeds wage inequality growth over the 1981–1997 period. Employer costs due to paid leave, pensions, and health insurance fell for low wage labor and rose for high wage labor over this period. The findings suggest income effects as a contributory factor in the relative decline of fringe benefits among low wage workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on a study entitled The Decline in the Relative Income of Negro Men, which investigated the trend in the relative income of African American men from 1948-1964. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate two of the propositions in the study regarding the trend in the income ratio of the employees. First, the hypothesis that fluctuations in aggregate demand affect the income ratio of African American male workers is analyzed. Second, a trend in relative income from 1948 to 1964 is sought in order to verify the conclusion in the study that the 1950s were characterized by a decline in the African American and U.S. employees income ratio. Thus, the values of the income ratio of the employees from 1939 to 1964 are recorded. Assuming that the 1939 value accurately reflects the relative income of African American workers in the pre-World War II period, there appears to be a dramatic increase since that time. Hence, the analysis of the study suggests that the secular increase in the income ratio represents a decline in discrimination against African American workers. However, this decline may merely reflect the migration of the workers from the South to the less discriminating North rather than a decline in the U.S. propensity to discriminate.

This paper combines income tax returns with macroeconomic household balance sheets to estimate the distribution of wealth in the United States since 1913. We estimate wealth by capitalizing the incomes reported by individual taxpayers, accounting for assets that do not generate taxable income. We successfully test our capitalization method in three micro datasets where we can observe both income and wealth: the Survey of Consumer Finance, linked estate and income tax returns, and foundations' tax records. We find that wealth concentration was high in the beginning of the twentieth century, fell from 1929 to 1978, and has continuously increased since then. The top 0.1% wealth share has risen from 7% in 1978 to 22% in 2012, a level almost as high as in 1929. Top wealth-holders are younger today than in the 1960s and earn a higher fraction of the economy's labor income. The bottom 90% wealth share first increased up to the mid-1980s and then steadily declined. The increase in wealth inequality in recent decades is due to the upsurge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality. We explain how our findings can be reconciled with Survey of Consumer Finances and estate tax data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines what is known about error in the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE). It reviews likely sources of error in consumer expenditure surveys and describes the various approaches that have been used to evaluate estimates from the CE in the United States and from similar surveys around the world. In the United States, many efforts to assess the quality of the CE have compared CE estimates to estimates from other surveys or from the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA). In addition, other studies have used data internal to the CE in an attempt to assess the level of error. We review studies that take each of these approaches and assess their strengths and weaknesses. Our review shows that, as with other national and international surveys on household spending, the direction and magnitude of measurement errors in the CE are not well understood. The general impression that the CE expenditure estimates are dominated by underreporting is based largely on comparisons of the CE with NIPA estimates. However, other results suggest that the magnitude and direction of errors in the CE depend on the expenditure category examined, characteristics of the respondent and the survey protocol, and the method used to assess these errors. New research clearly is needed to understand the sources of error in surveys collecting consumer expenditure data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skin color has been proposed to contribute to race-based health disparities in the United States because of differences in ultraviolet (UV) light–induced vitamin D synthesis. The prediction of this hypothesis, herein named the UVD hypothesis, is that racial disparities in health outcomes are correlated with UV light availability. This paper investigates whether UV light availability is associated with disparities in the rates of low birth weight (LBW) and preterm birth (PTB) between whites and blacks, because these outcomes are thought to be influenced by vitamin D status and to shape disease risk in later life. Data on LBW and PTB from 2007 (n = 2,825,620 births) were compared with data on UV light exposure across the United States. Contrary to the predictions of the UVD hypothesis, LBW and PTB rate disparities were greatest in states with the highest UV light exposure. Notably, income inequality was positively and significantly related to LBW and PTB disparities, even after controlling for UV light availability. The results of this analysis demonstrate that there is a significant environmental gradient in racial disparities in birth outcomes in the United States, but other social or environmental factors associated with living in the southern United States are likely stronger contributors to disparities in birth outcomes than UV light–induced vitamin D status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we expand on the seminal work of Altonji and Shakotko (1987) and Topel (1991) and reinvestigate the returns to seniority in the United States. We begin with the same wage equation as in previous studies. We extend the model of Hyslop (1999) and explicitly model the participation/employment and inter-firm mobility decisions, which, in turn, define the individual's experience and seniority. We introduce into the wage equation a summary of the workers' entire career path. The three-equation system is estimated simultaneously using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). We find that for each of the three education groups studied the returns to seniority are larger than those previously found in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is complementary to the recent cross-country studies of Jeffrey Sachs (1979), and William Branson and Julio Rotemberg (1980), which document the contrast between nominal wage inertia in the postwar United States and real wage inertia in Europe and Japan, and examine the theoretical and policy implications of this contrast. Here I begin with another procedure for documenting the difference in nominal wage behaviour among the United Kingdom, United States and Japan, and then concentrate on explaining its causes rather than its consequences. Real wage inertia plays no role in my analysis, reflecting my finding that the real wage rate in quarterly postwar data for the United Kingdom and Japan displays more variability than in the United States. The basic argument of this paper comes down to three main points: (1) Macroeconomic instability in the United States has been aggravated by the unusually sluggish behaviour of nominal wages during the postwar era. Whether measured as the standard deviation of wages relative to hours worked, or the ratio of the respective response coefficients of wages and hours worked to changes in nominal GNP, wages in Britain and Japan are five to ten times more responsive than in the United States. Thus, of any given fluctuation in aggregate nominal demand, a larger fraction takes the form of a change in real output and employment in the United States than in the United Kingdom or Japan. (2) The drastic decline of American wage responsiveness in the postwar period as compared to the years between 1892 and 1940, together with the 1948 invention of the three-year staggered wage contract in the American unionised industrial sector, seems to be more than coincidental. It is not only the long duration of US contracts, but also their staggered nature, that makes wage changes relatively unresponsive to expansions or contractions in nominal GNP growth. (3) Japanese labour market institutions look much more like those suggested a... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poor economic position of single-mother households is a result of three factors: women's generally lower wages, lower economic support from men, and a relatively great need for income. This paper examines the relative importance of the last two of these factors. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study show that single-mother households in West Germany and the United States have high rates of poverty while their situation in Sweden is considerably better. The remainder of the analysis concentrates on the economic risks which would be faced by married parents if they were to separate tomorrow, and on the insurance transfer incomes provide against such risks. It is shown, first, that the costs of breaking one household into two are considerable, and that single-mother households will be worse off economically, unless a substantial increase in family income takes place. Second, that the economic dependence of married mothers places many in a `high risk' situation, where they will lose a high proportion of their economic resources if the support from a spouse disappears. Finally, the analysis shows that transfer income respresents a poor insurance against the risk resulting from women's economic dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on interindustry wage structure variations in the United States. During recent years a number of writers have revived the investigation into the forces determining secular change in the industrial wage structure which had been comparatively quiescent. Two of the recent contributions, Professor John T. Dunlop's "Income, Employment and Public Policy," and Professor Arthur M. Ross' "Trade Union Wage Policy," focus attention on particular variables as explanations of variation in the industrial wage structure. It is the purpose of the present article to examine the position of the writers of the two papers cited with a view toward proposing a broader model to explain interindustry variations in wages. The statistical evidence provided in these publications is concerned with the behavior of average hourly earnings of a group of manufacturing industries plus bituminous coal and steam railroads over the period 1923 to 1940. The relationship between changes in output per man-hour and changes in earnings is tested by the use of rank correlation.

The article discusses various aspects of annual wage guarantee plans in the United States. Until very recently an economic literature on annual wage guarantee plans did not exist. No books entirely devoted to the subject had been published; periodical literature described experiences with such plans, but did not analyze them. Within the last year, however, three volumes' presenting an economic analysis of guarantee plans have appeared. The authors of these studies differ widely in their evaluation of such guarantees. The purpose of this paper is to consider the different assumptions and analytical approaches behind these opposing beliefs and, though this analysis, to arrive at some conclusions concerning guarantee plans and their place in our economy. In fulfilling these aims it will first be necessary to compare the views of the authors on such basic questions as the effect of guarantee plans on consumption, investment, employment, mobility of labor, and the policies of individual firms.

The article presents information on some major aspects of the economic status of Negros. Since the major concern of this paper is not "whence" or "what," but "whither" the Negro economically, the general picture of the present economic status of the Negro has been surveyed under four main divisions, the gainful Negro workers in the U.S. classified into socio-economic groups in 1930, for purposes of comparison, Negro workers in the relief population classified into socio-economic groups as of May, 1934, the more insistent economic problems confronting the Negro in the recovery program and, that the solution of the Negro's economic plight is not to be found in any kind of tie-up with organized craft unionism in the U.S. In analyzing the present economic status of the Negro, the relief census for 1933 and estimates based by the Research, Statistical and Financial section of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration on this census have been used. The relief census rather than available estimates on incomes or expenditures has been chosen because the data of the relief census are more complete and more reliable than such estimates as may be deducted from available data on the incomes or expenditures of Negroes and because the relief percentages indicate marc accurately than do the income or expenditure estimates the degree of economic distress suffered by the various socio-cconomic classes of Negroes.

Many people in the United States have achieved economic stability through self-employment and are often seen as embracing the entrepreneurial spirit and seizing opportunity. Yet, research also suggests that self-employment may be precarious for many people in the lower socioeconomic strata. Drawing on a unique dataset that combines longitudinal survey data with administrative tax data for a sample of low- and moderate-income (LMI) workers, we bring new evidence to bear on this debate by examining the link between self-employment and economic insecurity. Overall, our results show that self-employment is associated with greater economic insecurity among LMI workers compared with wage-and-salary employment. For instance, compared with their wage-and-salary counterparts, the self-employed have 78, 168, and 287 percent greater odds of having an income below basic expenses, and experiencing an unexpected income decline and high levels of income volatility, respectively. We also find that differences in financial endowment and access to health insurance are key drivers in explaining the relationship between employment type and economic insecurity, as being able to access $2,000 in an emergency greatly lowers the odds of budgetary constraint, whereas lack of health insurance increases those odds. These findings suggest that formal work arrangements with wages and benefits offered by an employer promotes greater economic stability among LMI workers compared with informal work arrangements via self-employment. We discuss implications of these results for future research and policy initiatives seeking to promote economic wellbeing through entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple imputation (MI) is a popular and well-established method for handling missing data in multivariate data sets, but its practicality for use in massive and complex data sets has been questioned. One such data set is the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a longstanding and extensive survey of household income and wealth in the United States. Missing data for this survey are currently handled using traditional hot deck methods because of the simple implementation; however, the univariate hot deck results in large random wealth fluctuations. MI is effective but faced with operational challenges. We use a sequential regression/chained-equation approach, using the software IVEware, to multiply impute cross-sectional wealth data in the 2013 PSID, and compare analyses of the resulting imputed data with those from the current hot deck approach. Practical difficulties, such as non-normally distributed variables, skip patterns, categorical variables with many levels, and multicollinearity, are described together with our approaches to overcoming them. We evaluate the imputation quality and validity with internal diagnostics and external benchmarking data. MI produces improvements over the existing hot deck approach by helping preserve correlation structures, such as the associations between PSID wealth components and the relationships between the household net worth and sociodemographic factors, and facilitates completed data analyses with general purposes. MI incorporates highly predictive covariates into imputation models and increases efficiency. We recommend the practical implementation of MI and expect greater gains when the fraction of missing information is large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses an effort to provide basic needs products to poor people in the U.S. Topics include the lack of non-food items provided by the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the costs of basic hygiene items, and transportation problems preventing access to retail stores. The ethical reasons for social workers to be involved in providing basic needs products are addressed in relation to empathy and equity.

Objectives Retrospective measures of childhood socioeconomic status (SES) in cohort studies of aging that first observe people late in life—such as the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)—are widely used. However, their measurement validity and reliability are unknown. We assess the reliability and validity of the HRS's retrospective measures of parental education and childhood family finances. Methods We use records for 6,343 HRS sample members who were children in 1940 that have been linked to records from the complete-count 1940 U.S. Census. We assess interrater reliability by comparing (a) retrospective reports of childhood SES collected from sample members in the 1992–2018 HRS to (b) prospective measures of parallel concepts collected from HRS sample members' parents in the 1940 Census. We assess predictive validity by comparing the results of analyses that model later-life outcomes as a function of childhood SES as measured both prospectively and retrospectively. Results Interrater reliabilities of retrospective measures of parental education are high; however, the same is not true of the retrospective measure of childhood family finances. Both retrospective and prospective measures of childhood SES are predictive of later-life outcomes, and with similar strengths and directions of associations for most outcomes. Discussion Researchers who rely on retrospective indicators of childhood SES from the HRS should be aware of their measurement properties. They are measured with error, and that error modestly attenuates estimates of their associations with later-life outcomes. However, prospective and retrospective measures of childhood SES have similar predictive validity. These findings should reassure researchers who rely on retrospective measures of childhood SES in the HRS and similarly designed surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Adults around retirement age are especially vulnerable to the effects of the recent economic downturn associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This study investigated disturbances to working life and mental health among Americans aged at least 55 during the early months of the pandemic. Methods Using data from the nationwide COVID-19 Coping Study (N = 6,264), we examined rates of job loss, furloughs, hour/income reductions, and work from home, along with unchanged work status, by age, gender, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and occupation. We next described sources of worry by job transition group and tested the adjusted associations of COVID-19-related job transitions with life satisfaction, loneliness, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms. Results Most job losses occurred among respondents younger than age 65 and those without college degrees. Job loss and reduced hours/income were more common among Hispanics compared to other racial/ethnic groups, and work from home transitions were most common among respondents with high educational attainment and jobs in government- and education-related occupations. Workers who lost their jobs had the lowest life satisfaction and the highest loneliness and depressive symptoms, followed by workers who were furloughed and workers with reduced hours/income. Work from home was associated with more anxiety than unchanged work. Discussion COVID-19-related job transitions are detrimental to mental health, even when they might keep workers safe. These results enhance our understanding of the potentially long-term mental health effects of social and economic aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight the need for economic and mental health support for aging Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Disability in the United States has not improved in recent decades. Comparing temporal trends in disability prevalence across different income groups, both within and between the United States and England, would inform public policy aimed at reducing disparities in disability. Methods Using the Health and Retirement Study and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we estimated annual percent change from 2002 to 2016 in disability among community-dwelling adults (197,021 person-years of observations). Disability was defined based on self-report of limitations with 5 instrumental activities of daily living and 6 activities of daily living. We examined the trends by age and income quintile and adjusted for individual-level sociodemographic status and survey design. Results The adjusted annual percent change (AAPC) in disability prevalence declined significantly in both countries for ages 75 and older during 2002–2016. For ages 55–64 and 65–74, disability prevalence was unchanged in the United States but declined in England. Both countries experienced a widening gap in disability between low- and high-income adults among the younger age groups. For example, for those ages 55–64 in each country, there was no significant improvement in disability for the low-income group but a significant improvement for the high-income group (AAPC = −3.60; 95% confidence interval [CI; −6.57, −0.63] for the United States; AAPC = −6.06; 95% CI [−8.77, −3.35] for England). Discussion Improvements in disability were more widespread in England than in the United States between 2002 and 2016. In both countries, the disparity in disability between low- and high-income adults widened for middle-aged adults. Policies targeted at preventing disability among low-income adults should be a priority in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To examine the distributional effects of the 2008 recession and subsequent recovery across generational cohorts. Methods Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (2007–2016), we constructed a measure of economic well-being accounting for income, household size, and annuitized value of assets. We examine trajectories of adjusted income and inequality, using Gini coefficients and income shares by decile, for the overall population and by cohort during the recession and recovery. Results Inequality declined temporarily during the recession, but reached new highs during the recovery. During recovery, population-level increases in economic resources were not reflected among below-median households, as the more concentrated financial assets rose while broader-based home equity and employment fell or remained stagnant. Inequality measures increased for cohorts in their primary working years (Generation-X and Baby Boomers), but not among the younger Millennials, who were at early stages of education, workforce entry, and household formation. Discussion The study illustrates an integrative approach to analyzing cumulative dis/advantage by considering interactions between historically consistent macrolevel events, such as economic shocks or policy choices affecting all cohorts, and the persistent life-course processes that tend to increase heterogeneity and inequality as cohorts age over time. Although recovery policies led to rapid recovery of financial asset values, they did not proportionately reach those below the median or their economic resource types. Results suggest that in a high-inequality environment, recovery policies from economic shocks may need tailoring to all levels of resources in order to achieve more equitable recovery outcomes and prevent exacerbating cohort inequality trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates wealth trends from 1983 to 2010. The most telling finding is that median wealth plummeted over the years 2007–10 by 47 per cent. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, was up sharply between 2007 and 2010. Relative indebtedness continued to expand during the late 2000s for the middle class, though the proximate causes were declining net worth and income, rather than an increase in absolute indebtedness. The sharp fall in median net worth and the rise in its inequality from 2007 to 2010 are traceable to the high leverage of middle-class families and the high share of homes in their portfolio. The racial and ethnic disparity in wealth holdings, after remaining more or less stable from 1983 to 2007, widened considerably between 2007 and 2010. Hispanics, in particular, got hammered by the Great Recession in terms of net worth and net equity in their homes. Households under age 45 also got pummelled by the Great Recession, as their relative and absolute wealth declined sharply from 2007 to 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives Financial stressors such as wealth loss, indebtedness, and bankruptcy have gained the attention of public health scholars since the Great Recession. In this study, we extend this area of research by comparing the mental and physical impact of multiple financial stressors during midlife, a pivotal period in the life course for wealth accumulation and disease onset. Methods With data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (www.nlsinfo.org), an ongoing survey of adult men and women in the United States, we used logistic regression to estimate the associations between financial stressors and the risk of a psychiatric disorder or high blood pressure diagnosis from ages 31–39 in 1996 to ages 50–59 in 2016 (N = 7,143). Financial stressors include multiple types of wealth loss, debt, and bankruptcy. Results Even after adjusting for a comprehensive set of confounders, many of the financial stressors we considered had similar positive associations with the risk of a psychiatric disorder, whereas only debt and bankruptcy were associated with the risk of high blood pressure. The best-fitting models for both health outcomes included a simple indicator of indebtedness. Stock losses were not significantly associated with either health outcome. Discussion Given the recent volatility in the U.S. economy, our results highlight the potential loss of health that may occur if nothing is done to prevent economically vulnerable populations from sliding into financial crisis. Our results also emphasize the need for additional research to develop individual-level interventions to improve health among those already experiencing financial difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atheoretical formulation derived from the cumulative advantage literature, that intergenerational educational mobility has enduring life-course income effects above and beyond individuals' education, is empirically tested. This formulation contrasts sharply with both the human capital model, which does not consider parental education as a determinant of children's income, and the sociological research on social mobility, which mostly relies on a snapshot view to study the economic consequences of educational mobility. To test this theory, we use NLSY79 survey data (with Panel Study of Income Dynamics data serving for robustness checks). We apply growth models to the data to estimate if and how the different intergenerational educational mobility groups that are produced by the intersection of parental and respondent education shape life-course income trajectories. Results provide evidence in support of the argument that the intersection of parental and respondent education bears important long-term income consequences, mainly for men. These results, moreover, do not vary by race. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Public policies target a subset of the population defined as poor or needy, but rarely are people poor or needy in the same way. This is particularly true among older adults. This study investigates poverty among older adults in order to identify who among them is financially worst off. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past half century, Americans spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result. Debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending. We investigate an issue central to this debate: Is the growth of health spending a rational response to changing economic conditions — notably the growth of income per person? We develop a model based on standard economic assumptions and argue that this is indeed the case. Standard preferences — of the kind used widely in economics to study consumption, asset pricing, and labor supply — imply that health spending is a superior good with an income elasticity well above one. As people get richer and consumption rises, the marginal utility of consumption falls rapidly. Spending on health to extend life allows individuals to purchase additional periods of utility. The marginal utility of life extension does not decline. As a result, the optimal composition of total spending shifts toward health, and the health share grows along with income. In projections based on the quantitative analysis of our model, the optimal health share of spending seems likely to exceed 30 percent by the middle of the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard deviation of metropolitan per capita personal income (PCPI) and metropolitan average wage per job (AWPJ) provide straightforward indicators of unconditional sigma convergence for metropolitan economies within the United States. Using data for all metropolitan areas in the continental United States for the period 1969-2001, we tested for the unconditional sigma income convergence hypothesis by applying two unit root tests to the time series of the two standard deviations. Our results indicate that the time series can be described as random walks with drift, thereby supporting the claim that income divergence among metropolitan economies is not decreasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the evolution of lifetime labour income inequality by constructing present value life cycle measures that incorporate both earnings and employment risk. We find that, even though lifetime income inequality is 40% less than earnings inequality, the total increase in lifetime income inequality over the past 20 years is the same as earnings inequality. While the total increase is the same, the pathways there differ with earnings inequality experiencing a steady increase and lifetime income inequality increasing in spurts particularly in the latter half of the 1990s. Finally, we find the changes in lifetime income inequality are primarily driven by changes in earnings mobility and changes in the earnings distribution itself, changes in employment risk and the composition of the sample, such as the shift toward attaining more education and the ageing population, do not play a large role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With unprecedented increases, mortality trends in the United States have received significant attention in recent years. To date, research on this topic has emphasized specific causes of death and proximal behavioral or physiological determinants. In this commentary, I consider novel contributions of Zheng and Echave (Am J Epidemiol. 2021;190(11):2242–2255) in examining trends in mental health, health behaviors, and physiological dysregulation. I then discuss broader developments in related research and make a case for: 1) not allowing recent health trends among Whites to overshadow the urgent work that needs to be done to mitigate persistent racial inequities, 2) further investigation of what accounts for increases in income inequality and its life-span health consequences, and 3) broadening the scope of mechanisms considered to include underdiscussed topics such as the role of increases in social media use or environmental toxicant exposures. Underlying several potential explanations for observed trends in health and mortality is the fact that substantial change has occurred on multiple fronts in US society and that policy responses to these changes have been insufficient. An enhanced emphasis on innovative population health research will be essential to provide the evidence base needed for policy makers to rise to these urgent challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-sanctioned prevention strategies have included frequent handwashing with soap and water, covering the mouth and nose with a mask when around others, cleaning and disinfecting maintaining a distance of at least 6 feet from others, etc. Although many of these recommendations are based upon observation and past infection control practices, it is important to combine and explore public data sets to identify predictors of infection, morbidity and mortality to develop more finely honed interventions, based on sociodemographic factors. Method Cross-sectional study of both states in the US and counties in NY state. Results Population density was found to be significantly associated with state-level coronavirus infection and mortality rate (b  = 0.49, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.34, 0.64, P  < .0001). States that have lower socioeconomic status, lower mean age and denser populations are associated with higher incidence rates. In regard to NY state, counties with a higher percentage of minority residents had higher COVID-19 mortality rates (b  = 2.61, 95% CI: 0.36, 4.87, P  = 0.023). Larger population cohorts were associated with lower COVID-19 mortality rates after adjusting for other variables in the model (b  = −1.39, 95% CI: −2.07, −0.71, P  < 0.001). Population density was not significantly associated with COVID-19 mortality rates after adjustment across counties in the NY state. Public ridership was not indicative of cases or mortality across states in the USA; however, it is a significant factor associated with incidence (but not mortality) in NY counties. Conclusion Population density was the only significant predictor of mortality across states in the USA. Lower mean age, lower median household incomes and more densely populated states were at higher risk of COVID-19 infection. Population density was not found to be a significant independent variable compared to minority status and socioeconomic factors in the New York epicenter. Meanwhile, public ridership was found to be a significant factor associated with incidence in New York counties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two decades the widely reported personal saving rate in the United States has dropped from double digits to below zero. First, we attempt to account for the decline in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) saving rate. The macroeconomic literature suggests that 40-50 per cent of the drop since 1988 can be attributed to households spending stock-market capital gains. Another 30 per cent is accounting transfers from personal saving into government and corporate saving because of the way pensions and capital gains taxes are treated in the NIPA. Second, while NIPA saving measures are well suited to measuring the supply of new funds for investment and capital accumulation, it is not clear that they should be the target of government saving policies. Finally, we emphasize that the NIPA saving rate is not useful in judging whether households are preparing for retirement or other contingencies. Many households have accumulated significant wealth, primarily through retirement saving vehicles and capital gains, even as the saving rate slid. There remains a segment of the population who save little and whose behaviour appears untouched either by the stock-market boom or the slide in personal saving. We explore reasons and policy options for their puzzling low saving rate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We take bound tariffs under the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) as the starting point and attempt to measure how much liberalisation in agriculture will be achieved by the European Union (EU) and the US by the end of the implementation period of the Agreement. Using the Trade Restrictiveness Index (TRI) and the Mercantilistic Trade Restrictiveness Index (MTRI) as indicators, we assess the tariff structures chosen by the EU and the US in terms of their welfare and market access impacts. The effects of the actual UR Agreement commitments are compared with alternative tariff reduction schemes such as the 'Swiss formula' and a uniform reduction in tariffs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hispanic and Latino (HL) cancer survivors are at a critical disadvantage compared with non‐Hispanic White (NHW) patients regarding sociodemographic adversities and access to equitable treatment options. By 2030, there will be about four million HL cancer survivors in the U.S., representing nearly 20% of survivors in this country. Hispanics and Latinos are subjected to significant challenges in accessing and receiving equitable care relative to NHWs. Hispanics and Latinos also experience lower rates of health insurance and financial resources, limiting health care options. These disparities often originate from disparate social determinants of health, including lower funding for education and school programs, greater neighborhood stressors and violence, lower access to healthy and affordable food, and greater barriers to community health and exercise opportunities. Even among HL cancer survivors with proper access to health care, they experience disparate treatment options, including low inclusion in clinical trials and/or access to experimental therapies. A solution to these barriers necessitates complex and systemic changes that involve, for example, investing in public health programs, increasing the diversity and cultural awareness of the medical workforce, and promoting research opportunities such as clinical trials that are inclusive of HLs. Only through meaningful reform will equitable cancer care be available for all in the U.S. regardless of racial and/or ethnic background. This article reviews some of the critical social determinants of health and biases relevant to HL cancer survivors and provides recommendations for achieving cancer health equity. Implications for Practice: Hispanics and Latinos experience a significant and often disproportionate cancer‐related burden compared with non‐Hispanic and Latino White individuals and other racial and ethnic groups. Meaningful reform to achieve health equity in oncology should focus on approaches to gaining trust among diverse patients, cultural and community sensitivity and engagement in oncology care and research, diversifying the workforce, and improving inclusion in clinical trial participation. Taken together, these recommendations can lead to exemplary and equitable care for all patients. This article examines the contextual and systemic factors that contribute to and exacerbate disparities in cancer care for Hispanic and Latino cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests exclusionary mechanisms fostering negative socioeconomic outcomes for African immigrants. This study explored predictors of social exclusion among immigrants from African countries living in the United States. The authors examined four dimensions of social exclusion that entail social–cultural and structural–economic exclusion. Authors used structural equation modeling to analyze cross-sectional survey data from first- and second-generation African immigrants across the United States (N = 409). Findings highlighted the negative effects of discrimination on all four dimensions of social exclusion. In addition, higher levels of education were associated with higher levels of social–cultural exclusion, whereas higher levels of income were protective from social and structural–economic exclusion. Authors also found health status, religion, race, and immigrant generation to have significant effects on social exclusion. Study findings have important implications for social workers seeking to identify and prevent exclusionary mechanisms and practices affecting African immigrants in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an empirical test of the "declining significance of race" interpretation of the situation of blacks in the United States. Wilson (1980) argued that class has superseded race as the most important explanatory factor. Other scholars (e.g., Willie 1978) have claimed that race is still an important determinant of life chances for blacks, regardless of social class. This study tests both the "race" and "class" perspectives in regard to racial differences in personal income using data from the 1968 and 1988 Current Population Surveys (March). In both 1968 and 1988, significant differences in personal income between blacks and whites remained after controlling for social class and other demographic variables. However, there was a 5.5 percentage point reduction of the racial effect from 1968 to 1988. Contrary to the assumptions of the declining significance of race thesis, blacks with higher levels of education and occupational status were found to be worse off than less educated, lower status blacks when compared to similar whites. Continuing discrimination across class lines is offered as the best explanation of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the belief that capital over-accumulation is impossible in an economy with land-i.e. a non-reproducible factor of production, this paper shows that the possibility of dynamic inefficiency depends on the income share of land, and examines the historical tendencies of the income share of land in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence that financial markets can directly affect economic growth by studying the relaxation of bank branch restrictions in the United States We find that the rates of real, per capita growth in income and output increase significantly following intrastate branch reform We also argue that the observed changes in growth are the result of changes in the banking system Improvements in the quality of bank lending, not increased volume of bank lending, appear to be responsible for faster growth [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the rise of lump-sum payments and profit-sharing plans in the United States. Micro-level evidence on the impacts of shifts from base wage adjustments to lump-sum payments and profit sharing on labor costs and employment in unionized companies in the country are taken into account. Reasons the empirical analysis is important are discussed. It has been show that profit sharing cuts labor cost growth at companies that embraced lump-sum payments and profit-sharing plans, by around 5% per annum.

Attempts have recently been made to assign inequality contributions to various components of income. This paper discusses the issues involved in such assignments and highlights the problems that follow from having a number of possible decomposition rules. U. S. data on the distribution of family incomes are used to examine the relative influence of these income components and to evaluate empirically the performance of different decomposition rules. A wide range of inequality contributions can be obtained, even when restricted to only ‘naturally’ derived decomposition rules. Some of the results are plainly absurd and serve to warn against the indiscriminate use of decomposition formulae without first investigating their properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The degree of change in the hierarchy of occupations over long periods is the focus of this paper. Our concern is with the mechanism by which the hierarchy changes. Taxable wealth of incumbents of detailed occupations from 1789 Philadelphia is related to income data from the last three dicennial censuses. Several models of how change might occur are evaluated. We conclude that (1) change in occupational reward differentials is slower than previous estimates, and (2) the first-order causal mechanism by which change in the hierarchy has been presumed to take place is implausible. We also note within-occupation variability in assets of approximately the same magnitude in the two periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Metropolitan communities in the United States are interdependent. Each metropolis serves the economy through its key functions while at the same time it depends on other metropolises and systems for some of its own needs. Using 1960 data for SMSAs, this paper demonstrates that a community's position in this differentiated system influences the characteristics of its population. Two perspectives for determining a metropolitan community's key functions are used: one considers economic activities one at a time; the other considers the entire configuration of these activities at once. These two procedures are compared in their ability to identify groups of communities having distinctive social structures, as indicated by occupational and educational composition, income level, age and sex structure, and ability to attract and hold migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares two types of estimates of net migration for the United States, one by the forward survival ratio method derived at the Population Studies Center of the University of Pennsylvania ("CRS Estimates") and the other based on the place of residence question in the 1960 Census framed by the U.S. Bureau of Census ("Census Estimates"). Restricting the study to the white male population, and specifically to the two groups aged 20-24 and 25-29 in 1960, the author has attempted to explain the relationship between tile two types of estimate in terms of several factors, namely, the impact of multiple moves, mortality among migrants, changing probability of migration with age, military migration and economic variables such as median income, percent urban and percent unemployed. As anticipated by the author, the net migration for the 20-24 cohort was closely associated with military concentration whereas for the 25-29 cohort the association of net migration with economic factors was stronger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]