Abstract
The recent economic recession triggered by the global pandemic has renewed scholarly interest in the role of social welfare systems in supporting economically vulnerable families when they experience employment instability. This article unpacks the patterns of the cash and in-kind components of the monthly family benefit packages that US low-income single mothers accessed during and after the Great Recession. We used the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation and an innovative analytic procedure involving family benefit package plots, group-based trajectory modeling, and logistic regression modeling. We found that low-income single mothers more often used in-kind basic-needs packages and less often used packages that bundle a cash benefit or a childcare subsidy, regardless of their dynamic employment status. Our findings challenge the effectiveness of the US work-based welfare system in ensuring the economic security of economically vulnerable families and contribute to the policy discussions on unconditional basic income and President Biden’s American Families Plan.
Highlights
A work-based system disadvantages low-income single mothers, who often hold low-wage, unstable jobs and shoulder both wage earning and caregiving responsibilities in their families
Several social welfare programs temporarily expanded eligibility or benefits under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA 2009) to assist families affected by the economic downturn (Chang 2015; Chang and Romich 2021), children from single-parent families still experienced a larger increase in the poverty rate than children from married-couple families (Bitler et al 2017)
The current study focuses on three cash benefits and four in-kind benefits, in any combination: Unemployment Insurance (UI), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid (MA), housing assistance (HA), and subsidized childcare (CC)
Summary
A work-based system disadvantages low-income single mothers, who often hold low-wage, unstable jobs and shoulder both wage earning and caregiving responsibilities in their families. The results reveal that family benefit packages varied considerably by employment status, but mothers were more likely to use in-kind basic-needs packages than other packages that bundle a cash benefit or a childcare subsidy. This finding is inconsistent with the theoretical assumption that cash benefits serve as primary resources in a family benefit package to effectively improve family economic security, when mothers’ work capacity or employment opportunities are limited. The results shed light on the limitations of the US work-based welfare system and on the importance of a comprehensive family benefit package including the monthly basic income support
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
