Randy Albelda

Fallacies of Welfare-to-Work Policies

One main effort of welfare reform is to replace public assistance with earnings. To date, politicians and welfare reform advocates have applauded the efforts and claimed success. However, lurking at the surface of welfare-to-work policies are serious problems and structural impediments. Lack of jobs, low pay, job-readiness, and difficulties in securing ancillary supports like transportation and child care are obvious problems that are not easily resolved. However, a deeper and usually unaddressed problem is that the jobs low-income women take (or need) are not mother ready. Full-time low-wage work does not provide enough income to support families, nor does it accommodate the demands that full-time parents have. These problems plague welfare-to-work efforts and make life very difficult for poor, single-mother families. At the same time, they create an opportunity to consider the value of caregiving work and to reform the nature of low-wage work.

Welfare-to-Work, Farewell to Families? US Welfare Reform and Work/Family Debates

There are large research, policy, and economic gaps between the ways US researchers and policy makers address the work/family bind amongst middleclass professionals and poor lone mothers. This is clearly seen in US welfare reform, an important piece of work/family legislation in the 1990s. The new rules make the work/family binds worse for low-income, poor mothers and do not alleviate poverty. With its clear expectation that poor mothers be employed, the legislation opens up new avenues to revamp low-wage work for breadwinners and to socialize the costs of caring for family. Closing the literature gap may help to close the policy gap, which, in turn, would promote more income equality.

Women and poverty: Beyond earnings and welfare

Abstract Women’s poverty rates are higher than men’s, with single mothers having extremely high poverty rates. This article first briefly examines poverty measures and U.S. poverty rates among men and women. The author then describes and evaluates three categories of economic research on poverty: the lack or inadequacy of employment and earnings; family structure and welfare; and earnings capacities, care-giving responsibilities and employment. Finally the author assesses the policies to alleviate women’s poverty derived from these explanations.

The dilemmas of lone motherhood: key issues for feminist economics

The acute dilemmas facing lone mothers in raising their children and earning a living form a common theme across the articles in this special issue of Feminist Economics on Lone Mothers. Like other parents, lone mothers face difficult decisions in allocating their time to caregiving and income generation, but in their families there is only one adult to do both. Further, that one adult is a woman, who will generally earn less than a man, compounding the difficulties. Lone mothers must rely on a range of support mechanisms (fathers, other family members, employers, and government policy) to manage; they can therefore rarely be economically independent. Policies that are ideologically reluctant to support unmarried mothers in their caregiving may divide unmarried mothers from other lone mothers, and lone mothers from other poor parents. Nevertheless, most lone mothers find creative strategies to manage that are as varied as lone mothers themselves.

Lone Mothers: What is to be done?

This Dialogue presents the views of four authors, from the US, the UK, and Norway, on the best policies to help lone mothers. Lone mothers face an inevitable dilemma in allocating their time between earning income and caring for their children. The low-earning capacity of women in an unequal labor market exacerbates the problem, causing material hardship for many lone mothers and their families. The policy solutions proposed lie along a spectrum, ranging from those that seek to enable all lone mothers to take employment to those that aim to let mothers choose whether to take employment or care for their children themselves. Other policies discussed concern ways to value and support caregiving, improve the low-wage labor market for women, and provide a set of income supports that would both boost income and provide time to care for children.

To Work More or Not to Work More: Difficult Choices, Complex Decisions for Low-Wage Parents

Employment promotion has dominated antipoverty policies in the United States over the last several decades. Increased employment, especially in low-wage jobs, has not generated economic stability for many parents and has brought to light uneasy tensions between increased earnings, less time with children, and reduced public supports that families face in moving up the economic ladder. We use data collected from 22 focus groups conducted with low- and moderate-income parents from four states and the District of Columbia to explore the ways in which parents make decisions about increasing hours of employment.

Double Trouble: US Low-Wage and Low-Income Workers, 1979-2011

There is research on low-wage earners and on low-income adults, yet little that looks specifically at workers who are both. Changes in antipoverty programs and job structure in the United States suggest a rise in this group of workers, but not necessarily an accompanying change in the set of social protections that might cover them. We track the share of low-wage and low-income (LW/LI) workers and their access to a subset of employer benefits and antipoverty programs from 1979–2011. We explore changes by workers gender and family status based on feminist labor market and welfare state regime research that argues jobs and social protection programs are shaped by a heteronormative male-breadwinner model. We find increased shares of LW/LI workers; that LW/LI workers are least likely to receive antipoverty supports and employer benefits; and evidence for a male-breadwinner model in US social protection programs.

Paid Family and Medical Leave

How many people can afford to take time off from work without being paid? Not many. When a worker gets sick or a child or parent gets sick; when a woman is giving birth or when a parent needs to go to a conference with a teacher, leaving work can not only cost a day’s pay, but it can also cost advancement in a career. Women, who do most of caregiving, are particularly disadvantaged.

The State of the States: Fiscal Crisis in the 1990s

Our first purpose is to tell the story of the development of the fiscal crisis of the states and to examine why it has taken on a new economic and political importance. Then, on the basis of that analysis, we argue that progressive forces have an opportunity now to affect both immediate responses to the crisis and the longer run economic role of government. Our examination of the fiscal crisis of the states leads to some particular proposals for a progressive response — a response based on principles of democracy and equality.

Financial hardship after hematopoietic cell transplantation: Lack of impact on survival

Background: Financial hardship is a growing challenge for patients with blood cancer who undergo hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT), and it is associated with poor patient-reported outcomes. In contrast, little is known about the potential impact of patient-reported financial hardship on post-HCT survival. Methods: We sought to describe the association of financial hardship with survival after HCT in a prospectively assembled cohort of patients from three large transplant centers (n = 325). Results: There was no association between financial hardship measures assessed at 6 months post-HCT and 1- or 2-year survival after HCT. Conclusions: Patient-reported financial distress after HCT does not seem to adversely affect post-HCT survival. Impact: When assessing the effectiveness of interventions to ameliorate familial financial burden among HCT, the focus should be on patient-reported outcomes rather than survival. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 27(3); 345–7. ©2018 AACR.