Bradley Hardy

Decomposing Trends in Income Volatility: The 'Wild Ride' at the Top and Bottom

We use 2‐year panels from the Current Population Survey to provide a detailed accounting of family income volatility from 1980 to 2009. Volatility doubled overall, and the increase was most pronounced among the top 1% of the income distribution, but in any given year the level of volatility among the bottom 10% exceeds that of the top. The increased volatility comes from higher instability of head and spouse earnings, other nonlabor income, and from reduced covariance between these income sources with the tax system. This suggests that current tax policy is less effective in mitigating income shocks than previous decades.

Childhood Income Volatility and Adult Outcomes

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: (1) instability as measured by squared deviations around a family-specific mean; and (2) instability as percentage changes of 25 % or more. Volatility enters the model both separately and interacted with income level. I find that family income volatility during childhood has a modest negative association with educational attainment. Volatility has a smaller descriptive role in explaining intergenerational outcomes relative to permanent income. Across the income distribution, the negative association between volatility exposure and educational attainment is largest for young adults from moderate-income families.

Black Female Earnings and Income Volatility

I provide new evidence on earnings and income volatility among Black women in the United States over the past four decades by using matched data from the March Current Population Survey. I use a measure of total volatility that encompasses both permanent and transitory instability, and that admits labor-force transitions. My results show that, for Black women, earnings volatility fell over the entire period and income volatility rose after the mid 1980s. I also find that changes over time in labor force transitions into and out of work along with an increasing share of Black women continuously employed coincide with shifts in volatility levels and trends. Among Black women, differences in volatility levels emerge across education groups and marital status, though the trends typically remain consistent both across and within racial groups.

The Changing Safety Net for Low-Income Parents and Their Children: Structural or Cyclical Changes in Income Support Policy?

Refundable tax credits and food assistance are the largest transfer programs available to able-bodied working poor and near-poor families in the United States, and simultaneous participation in these programs has more than doubled since the early 2000s. To understand this growth, we construct a series of two-year panels from the 1981–2013 waves of the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement to estimate the effect of state labor-market conditions, federal and state transfer program policy choices, and household demographics governing joint participation in food and refundable tax credit programs. Overall, changing policy drives much of the increase in the simultaneous, biennial use of food assistance and refundable tax credits. This stands in stark contrast from the factors accounting for the growth in food assistance alone, where cyclical and structural labor market factors account for at least one-half of the growth, and demographics play a more prominent role. Moreover, since 2000, the business cycle factors as the leading determinant in biennial participation decisions in food programs and refundable tax credits, suggesting a recent strengthening in the relationship between economic conditions and transfer programs.