University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Examining Low-Income Single-Mother Families’ Experiences with Family Benefit Packages during and after the Great Recession in the United States

Chang, Yu-Ling; Wu, Chi-Fang

Content Files
Chang & Wu.pdf

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/114164

Description

Title
Examining Low-Income Single-Mother Families’ Experiences with Family Benefit Packages during and after the Great Recession in the United States
Author(s)
  • Chang, Yu-Ling
  • Wu, Chi-Fang
Issue Date
2021
Keyword(s)
  • family benefit package
  • Great Recession
  • single mothers in poverty
  • group-based trajectory modeling
  • UpSet plots
Date of Ingest
2022-05-11T18:58:27Z
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.
Publisher
MDPI
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
article
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/114164
Copyright and License Information
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)

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