Income Distribution Commons^™

How Do Latino Groups Fare In A Changing Economy? Occupation In Latino Groups In The Greater New York City Area, 1980-2009, Stephen Ruszczyk

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines demographic and socioeconomic factors of racial/ethnic groups in New York City between 1980 and 2009 – particularly the Latino population.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: Trends from 1990 continued in 2000, with numbers of Puerto Ricans in production dropping to only 14% of that group. More than a fifth of Puerto Ricans worked in management and professional …

Food Insecurity Across The First Five Years: Triggers Of Onset And Exit, Alison Jacknowitz, Taryn W. Morrissey

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Very low food security among young children is associated with developmental deficiencies. However, little is known about the factors that predict entry into or exit from very low food security during early childhood. This study seeks to: (1) Understand the triggers that explain movements into or out of very low food security among children from birth to age five; (2) Examine the first aim using different definitions of food insecurity. The analysis relies on the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a longitudinal, nationally representative dataset of approximately 10,700 children, to estimate linear probability models. Results suggest that residential moves …

The Impact Of Incarceration On Food Insecurity Among Households With Children, Sally Wallace, Robynn Cox

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This study seeks to determine the role that parental incarceration plays on the probability of food insecurity among families with children and very low food security of children using micro-level data from the Fragile Families and Child Well Being Study (FFCWS). The data set contains the 18-question food security module which allows us to explore the link between incarceration and food insecurity and very low food security among children, families, and adults. The incidence of very low food security in our data is somewhat higher than the national average, but the incidence of other levels of food security is similar …

The Effect Of Safety Net Programs On Food Insecurity, Lucie Schmidt, Lara Shore-Sheppard, Tara Watson

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Does the safety net reduce food insecurity in families? In this paper we investigate how the structure of benefits for five major safety net programs – TANF, SSI, EITC, SNAP, and Medicaid – affects low food security in families and very low food security among children. We build a calculator for the years 2001-2009 to impute eligibility and benefits for these programs in each state, taking into account cross-program eligibility rules. To identify a causal effect of the safety net, we instrument for imputed eligibility and benefits using simulated eligibility and benefits for a nationally representative sample. Focusing on non-immigrant, …

Family Structure, Work Patterns And Time Allocations: Potential Mechanisms Of Food Insecurity Among Children, Kelly Balistreri

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Over 469 thousand households in the U.S. experienced very low food security among children, a severe condition characterized by reductions in food intake due to an inability to afford enough food. But food insecurity is not simply about economic resources. There exists a paradox in which some poor households with children are food secure while some non-poor households with children are food insecure. This study moves beyond a singular focus on income and considers how the family context may protect or generate risk of food insecurity for children. The goals of the proposed project were to: 1) to provide a …

Identifying The Effect Of Wic On Very Low Food Security Among Infants And Children, Brent Kreider, John V. Pepper, Manan Roy

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC) is considered a crucial component of the social safety net in the United States, yet there is limited supporting evidence on the effects of WIC on the nutritional well-being and food security of infants and young children. Two key identification problems have been especially difficult to address. First, the decision to take up WIC is endogenous as households are not randomly assigned to the program; recipients are likely to differ from nonrecipients in unobserved ways (e.g., prior health) that are related to associated outcomes. Second, survey respondents often fail to report receiving public …

Two Can Live As Cheaply As One...But Three’S A Crowd, Christopher Bollinger, Cheti Nicoletti, Stephen Pudney

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

To measure poverty, incomes must be equivalized across households with different structures. In this paper, we use a very flexible ordered response model to analyze the relationship between income, demographic structure and subjective assessments of financial wellbeing drawn from the 1991-2008 British Household Panel Survey. Our results suggest the existence of large scale economies within marital/cohabiting couples, but substantial diseconomies from the addition of children or further adults. This pattern contrasts sharply with commonly-used equivalence scales, and is consistent with explanations in terms of the capital requirements associated with additions to the core couple.

Was There A ‘Race To The Bottom’ After Welfare Reform?, Sarah K. Burns

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Leading up to the passage of the 1996 welfare reform, there was much speculation and debate over the possibility that states would "race to the bottom" in setting welfare generosity if given more control over their individual programs. In the fifteen years after welfare reform, did such a race to the bottom ensue? Using a spatial dynamic econometric approach I investigate welfare competition across multiple policy instruments and across three distinct welfare periods - the AFDC regime, the experimental waiver period leading up to the reform, and the TANF era. Results suggest strategic policy setting occurs over multiple dimensions of …

Is Earnings Nonresponse Ignorable?, Christopher R. Bollinger, Barry T. Hirsch

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Earnings nonresponse in the Current Population Survey is roughly 30% in the monthly surveys and 20% in the March survey. If nonresponse is ignorable, unbiased estimates can be achieved by omitting nonrespondents. Little is known about whether CPS nonresponse is ignorable. Using sample frame measures to identify selection, we find clear-cut evidence among men but limited evidence among women for negative selection into response. Wage equation slope coefficients are affected little by selection but because of intercept shifts, wages for men and to a lesser extent women are understated, as are gender gaps. Selection is least severe among household heads.

The Child And Adult Care Food Program And Food Insecurity, Colleen Heflin, Irma Arteaga, Sara Gable

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

High rates of food insecurity are a significant problem in the United States. It is currently estimated that more than 48.8 million people live in food insecure households, meaning that at some time during the previous year, they were unable to acquire or were uncertain of having enough food to meet basic needs due to inadequate household resources (Coleman-Jensen, Nord, Andrews, & Carlson, 2011). Rates of food insecurity are substantially higher among those in households with incomes below the poverty line (40.2%) and in households with children headed by a single woman (35.1%). Levels of food insecurity increased across U.S. …

Childhood Income Volatility And Adult Outcomes, Bradley Hardy

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Using data linked across generations in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I estimate the relationship between exposure to volatile income during childhood and a set of socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood. The empirical framework is an augmented intergenerational income mobility model that includes controls for income volatility. I measure income volatility at the family level in two ways. First, instability as measured by squared deviations around a family-specific mean, and then as percent changes of 25 percent or more. Volatility enters the model both separately and interacted with income level. I find that family income instability during childhood has a …

Decomposing Trends In Income Volatility: The ‘Wild Ride’ At The Top And Bottom, Bradley Hardy, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

We provide a detailed accounting of the trend increase in family income volatility in recent decades by quantifying the contributions of household head earnings, spouse earnings, non-transfer non-labor income, transfer income, and tax payments (inclusive of the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit), along with covariances among the income components. Using twoyear matched panels in the Current Population Survey from 1980 to 2009, we find that the volatility of family income, as measured by the variance of the arc percent change, doubled over the past three decades. The increase in volatility was most pronounced among the top 1% of the income …

Demographic Characteristics Of The Latino Population In The Omaha-Council Bluffs Metropolitan Area, Lourdes Gouveia, Christian Espinosa, Yuriko Doku

Latino/Latin American Studies Fact Sheets

This is the first installment of fact sheets about the Latino population in the Omaha-Council Bluffs Metropolitan Statistical Area. Together, these fact sheets will provide the context for a forthcoming report on the economic and fiscal impacts of this population in the metro area.

Este es el primer número de una serie de boletines informativos acerca de la población latina en el área estadística metropolitana de Omaha-Council Bluffs. Esta serie servirá de contexto al reporte venidero sobre los impactos económicos y fiscales de la población latina y migrante en el área metropolitana.

Child Food Security And The Food Stamp Program: What A Difference A Month Makes, Yiran Li, Bradford Mills, George Davis, Elton Mykerezi

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Most Americans believe that children should not have either persistent concerns about the quality and quantity of food to eat or lack of actual access to food due to low household resources. However, in 2007, approximately 3.3 million households (8.3 percent of households with children) had food insecure children who did not have consistent access to adequate and safe foods (Nord and Golla, 2009). This implies less than complete coverage of children by the food-assistance safety net.

The United States’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), historically and commonly known as the Food Stamp Program (FSP), is a federal-assistance program designed …

Low Income Preschoolers' Non-Parental Care Experiences And Household Food Insecurity, Colleen Heflin, Irma Arteaga, Sara Gable

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Rates of food insecurity in households with children have significantly increased over the past decade. The majority of children, including those at risk for food insecurity, participate in some form of non-parental child care during the preschool years. To evaluate the relationship between the two phenomenon, this study investigates the effects of child care arrangements on food insecurity in households with children. To address the selection bias problem that arises from the fact that enrollment in different types of child care is not a random process, this study uses propensity scores techniques. The authors compare outcomes across five child care …

Families With Hungry Children And The Transition From Preschool To Kindergarten, Colleen Heflin, Irma Arteaga, Sara Gable

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This paper exploits a source of variation in the eligibility for federal nutrition programs to identify the program effects on food insecurity. Children are eligible for the WIC program until the day before they turn 61 months old. The result is an age discontinuity in program participation at the 61-month cutoff. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth-cohort dataset, we find strong evidence of a sizeable increase in household food insecurity at the 61- month cutoff. Our findings are robust to different model specifications, datasets, and various bandwidth choices using various non-parametric estimations.

On Persistent Poverty In A Rich Country, T.M. Tonmoy Islam, Jenny Minier, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

We examine differences in income within the U.S., and the regions of persistent poverty that have arisen, using a newly assembled dataset of counties that links historical 19th century Census data with contemporaneous data. The data, along with an augmented human capital growth model, permit us to identify the roles of contemporaneous differences in aggregate production technologies and factor endowments, in conjunction with the historical roles of institutions, culture, geography, and human capital. We allow for possible cross-county factor mobility via a correlated random effects GMM estimator that identifies simultaneously the coefficients on time varying and time-invariant determinants of income. …

The Importance Of Region And State Welfare Rules For Disconnected Single Mothers, Andrea Hetling

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The proportion of low-income, single mothers not receiving public assistance or participating in the formal employment sector has approximately doubled over the past decade. Many of the currently debated policy options to support these families focus on state level programs. However, little is known about the relationships between state welfare program characteristics and disconnectedness. This project assesses the effect of state welfare rules on the likelihood of being disconnected from these two income sources. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the Urban Institute‟s Welfare Rules Database, the current research compares the circumstances of these at-risk …

Recent Developments In Antipoverty Policies In The United States, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

I survey recent developments in antipoverty policy in the United States over the past decade and examine how the safety net and tax system affects poverty and its correlates using data from the 2000 to 2010 waves of the Current Population Survey-Annual Social and Economic Supplement. Unlike the 1980s and 1990s, and until the health care overhaul in 2009, the first decade of the 21st Century was relatively tepid in terms of major transfer policy reforms. However, real spending on most major social program increased significantly, and in some cases doubled or tripled, in response to demographic shifts and the …

Earnings Volatility In America: Evidence From Matched Cps, James P. Ziliak, Bradley Hardy, Christopher Bollinger

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

We offer new evidence on earnings volatility of men and women in the United States over the past four decades by using matched data from the March Current Population Survey. We construct a measure of total volatility that encompasses both permanent and transitory instability, and that admits employment transitions and losses from self employment. We also present a detailed decomposition of earnings volatility to account for changing shares in employment probabilities, conditional variances of continuous workers, and conditional mean variances from labor-force entry and exit. Our results show that earnings volatility among men increased by 15 percent from the early …

A Tale Of Two Cities? The Heterogeneous Impact Of Medicaid Managed Care In Kentucky, James Marton, Aaron Yelowitz, Jeffery C. Talbert

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Does managed care produce lower health care utilization and costs through better aligned financial incentives and alternative delivery methods (the “pure” HMO effect) or by attracting more healthy enrollees (enrollee selection)? The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on this fundamental question using a quasi-experimental approach that exploits the timing and county specific implementation of Medicaid managed care plans in two distinct sub-sets of Kentucky counties in the late 1990s. We find large differences in the relative success of each region in reducing utilization that are likely driven by important differences in plan design. Asthmatic children enrolled …

If You Don’T Build It... Mexican Mobility Following The U.S. Housing Bust, Brian C. Cadena, Brian K. Kovak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This paper demonstrates the importance of earnings-sensitive migration in response to local variation in labor demand. We use geographic variation in the depth of the housing bust to examine its effects on the migration of natives and Mexican-born individuals in the U.S. We find a strong effect of the housing bust on the location choices of Mexicans, with movement of Mexican population away from U.S. states facing the largest declines in construction and movement toward U.S. states facing smaller declines. This effect operated primarily through interstate migration of Mexicans previously residing in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, through …

Nebraska Immigration And Latino Issues Related Legislative Bills, Office Of Latino/Latin American Studies (Ollas)

Latino/Latin American Studies Other Publications

The year 2011 saw many Latino and Immigration-related bills in the Nebraska State Unicameral. View the OLLAS-created chart to read a summary.

Welfare Reform Policies And Their Effect On Poverty Rates Across The United States, Luke N. Welle

Political Science Theses and Capstones

We have all heard the arguments on the pros and cons of welfare reform, its effect on recipient’s lives, and its effectiveness in achieving its goals. In concluding whether or not it is effective in achieving its goals, the actual goals are broad and difficult to define. I consider the goal being reducing the number of citizens living in poverty. My research focuses specifically on how variations in the welfare system perform in reducing poverty rates across the United States. I investigate what governmental policies each state has in place and their effect on poverty. Those states, in which poverty …

Gender-Separate Education: The Effects On Student Achievement & Self-Esteem On Economically Disadvantaged Public Middle School Students In Philadelphia, Heather M. O'Neill, Allison Guerin

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

In 2003, three Philadelphia middle schools with similar demographics and failing student achievement levels were taken over by an educational management organization. Two were transformed into distinct single-sex academies within the original school buildings and a third remained coeducational. Students did not have the option where to attend, eliminating selection bias. Through funding from a Spencer Foundation grant, data was collected on 1,000 students for 2002-03 through 2004-05 to examine impacts of gender-segregation. We find students in single sex schools witness greater improvements in standardized test scores, with boys gaining the most, and no differences on Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale.

The Appalachian Regional Development Act And Economic Change, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965 is one of the longest serving place-based regional development programs in the U.S., and is the largest in terms of geographic scope. I use county-level data from the 1960 thru 2000 Decennial Censuses to evaluate the effect of ARDA on poverty rates and real per capita incomes in Appalachia. The intent to treat parameter is identified in a difference-in-difference-in-difference framework by comparing outcomes in Appalachia to her border counties. Additional knowledge of which counties were solely eligible for highway development funds under ARDA from those counties eligible for both highway as well as …

Does Race Based Redistricting Matter For Policy?, Ebonya Washington

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

During the 1990 congressional redistricting many states were mandated to create additional majority minority-resident districts in order to elect more minorities to Congress. Civil rights groups and Republicans cheered. The Party views Democratic districts stripped of Black voters as opportunities to repaint blue districts red. The academic literature agrees, attributing the Republican return to House control in 1994 to race based redistricting. However, this literature generally focuses on the district as the unit of analysis, a focus that is too narrow, as some districts gain Black residents while others lose them. I focus on states, the level at which redistricting …

Poverty, Inequality And Cost Of Living Differences, Enrico Moretti

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Metropolitan areas in the US are characterized by enormous differences in average income, earnings, and factor productivity. The income of individuals located in metropolitan areas at the top of the income distribution is more than double the income of observationally similar individuals located in metropolitan areas at the bottom of the distribution. These differences reflect, at least in part, variation in local productivity.

The Omaha Site: Migrant Civil Society Under Construction Series On Latino Immigrant Civic Engagement, Lourdes Gouveia, Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, Yuriko Doku, Alejandra Toledo, Sergio Sosa

Latino/Latin American Studies Reports

Omaha was one of nine cities in the United States chosen by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars to explore immigrant civic and political participation. Lourdes Gouveia and the OLLAS team, along with Sergio Sosa of the Heartland Workers Center, produced this bilingual report based on interviews and a round table with broad-based participation by the immigrant and Latino community.

Omaha es una de las nueve ciudades en los Estados Unidos que fué escogida por el Centro Internacional Woodrow Wilson para Académicos con el fin de examinar la participación cívica y política de los migrantes. Lourdes Gouveia con el …

The Impact Of U.S. Family Planning Programs On Fertility And Mortality: Evidence From The War On Poverty And Title X, Martha Bailey

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Over forty years ago, the U.S. government adopted a policy of funding domestic family planning services, and the effects of these programs have been debated ever since. Within an event-study framework, I exploit community-level variation in the timing of federal grants for family planning services under the Economic Opportunity Act (1965 to 1974) and Title X (1970 to 1980) to evaluate their impact. The results provide robust evidence that federal family planning grants reduced birth rates in funded communities by four percent within six years. I find no evidence that family planning grants reduced maternal or infant mortality rates.