Social Work Commons^™

Expanded Child Tax Credit Payments Supported Families Raising Children With Disabilities, Allyson Baughman, Laura Brugger, Meg Comeau, Leah Hamilton, Candace Jarzombek, Caroline Parker, Stephen Roll

Social Policy Institute Research

The 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) provided temporary enhancements to the existing CTC for the tax years 2021 and 2022. Under the expanded credit, families with children under the age of 18 were eligible to receive a credit of up to $3,000 per child ($3,600 for children under the age of 6).

In addition, half the credit was paid out on a monthly basis rather than as a one-time payment at tax time. This provision was designed to provide more immediate financial support to families with children during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it also supported families who were at …

“It Helped Us More Than I Could Have Imagined”: How The 2021 Expanded Child Tax Credit Supported Families Raising Children With Disabilities, Laura Brugger, Stephen Roll, Leah Hamilton, Allyson Baughman, Meg Comeau, Candace Jarzombeck, Caroline Parker

Social Policy Institute Research

The 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) provided temporary enhancements to the existing CTC for the tax years 2021 and 2022. Under the expanded credit, families with children under the age of 18 were eligible to receive a credit of up to $3,000 per child ($3,600 for children under the age of 6). In addition, half the credit was paid out on a monthly basis rather than as a one-time payment at tax time. This provision was designed to provide more immediate financial support to families with children during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it also supported families who were at …

Financial Well-Being Of Frontline Healthcare Workers: The Importance Of Employer Benefits, Mathieu Despard, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Haotian Zheng, Grace Anderson, Olivia Borland, Kourtney Gilbert

Social Policy Institute Research

Frontline healthcare workers – especially direct care workers (DCWs), such as home health aides, struggle due to low pay, lack of benefits, and difficult working conditions. The need for these workers is growing. Unless frontline healthcare jobs improve, positions may be difficult to fill, and care for vulnerable members of society may be compromised.

In this study, we surveyed 2,321 frontline healthcare workers and conducted in-depth interviews with 30 of these workers concerning pay, benefits, work conditions, and financial well-being. Key survey findings included:

• Only 39% of workers were eligible for at least four out of five major benefits (e.g., …

Democratizing The Economy Or Introducing Economic Risk? Gig Work During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Daniel Auguste, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard

Social Policy Institute Research

Though the growth of the gig economy has coincided with increased economic precarity in the new economy, we know less about the extent to which gig work (compared with other self-employment arrangements and non-gig work) may fuel economic insecurity among American households. We fill this gap in the literature drawing on a sample of 4,756 workers from a unique national survey capturing economic hardships among non-standard workers like app-and platform-based gig and other self-employed workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from generalized boosted regression modeling, utilizing machine learning to account for potential endogeneity, demonstrated that gig workers experienced significantly greater …

Usage And Impact Of Benefits Among Frontline Healthcare Workers, Mathieu Despard

Social Policy Institute Research

We completed a study about frontline healthcare workers – the benefits they get through work and how they are doing financially. This brief provides highlights from our survey to 2,321 workers and interviews with 30 workers.

Combatting Rising Healthcare Costs For Healthier Adults, Alejandra Muñoz-Rivera

Social Policy Institute Research

In 2020, healthcare expenditures averaged $12,530 per person, up 9.7% from 2019. In 2018, 19% of U.S. households had medical debt with $2,000 being the median amount owed. Over half of adults between 18 to 64 years of age are estimated to experience some form of medical financial hardship including medical bills or debt, stress about medical bills, and delaying or forgoing treatment specifically due to cost. In a 2022 survey of 140 Medicaid and Marketplace members by researchers from the Social Policy Institute (SPI) and the Centene Center of Health Transformation, one-third of respondents reported having unpaid medical bills. …

Experimental Evidence On Consumption, Saving, And Family Formation Responses To Student Debt Forgiveness, Jason Jabarri, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard, Leah Hamilton

Social Policy Institute Research

As policy-makers grapple with whether or not to forgive student debt, for who, and how much, it is important to explore how student debt forgiveness would relate to intended household decisions and behaviors. We conducted a survey experiment that asked participants with student debt to imagine a scenario in which the federal government forgave a certain amount of student debt. We then had these participants report on how this would affect their decisions and behaviors. 1,053 participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that offered $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, and complete debt forgiveness. Our results indicate that student debt …

Disparate Financial Assistance Support For Small Business Owners, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Daniel Auguste, Mathieu Despard, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

Small business owners experienced a drastic economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Government pandemic assistance failed to reach many small business owners, especially those historically underserved by financial institutions. Drawing on a 2021 survey of 246 small business owners, the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis descriptively examined the extent to which small business owners sought and received business assistance, and whether applications and approval of government assistance varied by race and ethnicity. We find that though Hispanic and Black business owners applied for government assistance at a higher rate than white business owners, Black business …

Did Government Benefits Help Israeli Households Avoid Hardship During Covid-19? Evidence From A National Survey, Olga Kondratjeva, Talia Schwartz-Tayri, Sam Bufe, Stephen Roll, John Gal, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of Israel quickly introduced aggressive social distancing measures to curb the virus spread and adapted its unemployment insurance program in response to rising unemployment rates. This study examines the relationship between household income and the experience of material hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, and investigates how the receipt of unemployment benefits moderated the relationship between income and material hardship. Using data from a household survey, we find a negative association between household income and the experience of material hardship. Moreover, middle-income households receiving unemployment benefits were more likely to …

Vaccine Hesitance During Covid-19: Exploring Motivations And Incentives, Laura Brugger

Social Policy Institute Research

As rates of vaccination have slowed, concerns are growing about how to increase vaccine uptake among those who are vaccine hesitant, particularly with the emergence of new and contagious variants such as Delta. Using our national Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey, we examine the predictors of vaccine hesitance in the U.S. and report on findings from an experiment assessing the potential impacts of vaccine incentive schemes.

Our study points to the difficulties in overcoming vaccine hesitance among the unvaccinated. Vaccine hesitance was common across income levels, and experience with COVID-19-related hardships—such as knowing someone who died of the disease or …

Paid Sick Leave Heading Into Covid-19: A Descriptive Account Of Workers Who Lacked Paid Sick Leave, David Rothwell, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Mathieu Despard, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

Paid sick leave is vital for controlling the spread of illness in the workplace and an invaluable public health tool, but too few workers have access to it. In this brief, we examine the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to assess paid sick leave coverage with a focus on the social and economic characteristics of workers without paid leave.

Using a nationally representative survey with roughly 4,000 working respondents, we found that a third lacked access to paid sick leave. Workers without paid leave were younger, more likely to be female, more likely to be white, and less likely to …

Expanded Child Tax Credit Payments Have Not Reduced Employment, Stephen Roll, Leah Hamilton, Yung Chun

Social Policy Institute Research

Approximately 60 million American children living in 35 million households are now receiving monthly payments from the federal government as part of the temporary Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion. Recently, a debate has emerged over whether or not the expanded CTC will cause parents to leave the workforce. On one side of the debate, a large number of economists have argued that the CTC will not cause a reduction in employment. However, a recent study used a simulation approach to estimate that 2.6% of parents will exit the labor force as a result of the CTC.

The reports below address …

Housing Hardships During Covid-19, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Yung Chun, Stephen Roll, Katie Kristensen

Social Policy Institute Research

Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. households were burdened by the cost of rental and mortgage payments, burdens which disproportionately fell on Black and Hispanic families. Using a 5-wave survey, we examined whether disparities in housing cost burden continued throughout the pandemic and trends in how households fell behind on rent and mortgage payments. We found that more than a third of households experienced housing cost burdens during the pandemic, with a slightly higher percentage of households of color bearing cost burdens than white households. Renters had greater cost burdens than homeowners.

During the pandemic, significantly more Black and …

Employment, Financial And Well-Being Effects Of The 2021 Expanded Child Tax Credit: Wave 1 Executive Summary, Leah Hamilton, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard, Elaine Maag

Social Policy Institute Research

The 2021 temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) is unprecedented in its reach and is predicted to cut American child poverty by more than half. The expanded CTC provides families with $3,600 for every child in the household under the age of six, and $3,000 for every child between the ages of six and 17. Almost all middle- and low-income families with children are eligible for the CTC. Married parents making less than $150,000 and single parents making less than $112,500 per year will receive the full amount of the credit, which begins to phase out slowly after …

The Socioeconomic Impacts Of Covid-19 Study: Survey Methodology Report, Stephen Roll, Sam Bufe, Yung Chun, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

The Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey uniquely documents the social and economic impacts of a global pandemic as people experienced the global pandemic. These findings can inform social, economic and health policies now and in the future. Though the data from the survey are not publicly available, they are freely available on a limited basis to interested researchers. If you or your organization are interested in accessing the cleaned and coded survey data, or would like more information about the survey, please reach out to the Social Policy Institute at.

Improving The Take-Up Of Homecare Services Among Holocaust Survivors In A Jewish Charitable Organization, Olga Kondratjeva, Stephen Roll, Odelya Mantsura, Pini Miretski, Olga Statland-Vaintraub, Hannah Brumbaum, Ariel Tikotsky, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

This research brief is part of a series by the Social Impact Nudgeathon initiative. This initiative incorporated insights from behavioral economics into the design and delivery of social welfare programs. Developed through a partnership between the Joint Distribution Committee in Israel (JDC-Israel) and the Social Policy Institute (SPI) at Washington University in St. Louis, this initiative is among the first of its kind to launch in Israel. Working in close collaboration, research teams from the United States and Israel investigated whether using behavioral insights to make small changes in the delivery of social service programs in Israel and Russia would …

Improving Educational And Career Opportunities For Youth With Disabilities In The Future Trend Program, Yifat Klein, Osnat Elnathan, Mayzahav Itiel Barkai, Miriam Palachi, Anat Halevy, Yair Feingold, Ariel Tikotsky, Guy Hochman

Social Policy Institute Research

This research brief is part of a series by the Social Impact Nudgeathon initiative. This initiative incorporated insights from behavioral economics into the design and delivery of social welfare programs. Developed through a partnership between the Joint Distribution Committee in Israel (JDC-Israel) and the Social Policy Institute (SPI) at Washington University in St. Louis, this initiative is among the first of its kind to launch in Israel. Working in close collaboration, research teams from the United States and Israel investigated whether using behavioral insights to make small changes in the delivery of social service programs in Israel and Russia would …