Susan E. Mayer

Poverty and the Distribution of Material Hardship

Public concern with poverty derives in large part from the assumption that low income families cannot afford necessities. Yet official poverty statistics focus on measuring income, not on measuring material hardship. Two surveys of Chicago residents measure whether families could afford food, housing and medical care. A familys official income-to-needs ratio explained 24 percent of the variance in the amount of material hardship it reported. Adjustments for family size, age, health, noncash benefits, home ownership, and access to credit explain another 15 percent. Variations in permanent income explain almost none of the remaining variance in hardship. Among families with the same official income-to-needs ratio, material hardship varies by age, family size and composition.

Has the Intergenerational Transmission of Economic Status Changed

Only a few studies have tried to estimate the trend in the elasticity of children’s economic status with respect to parents’ economic status, and these studies produce conflicting results. In an attempt to reconcile these findings, we use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the trend in the elasticity of son’s income with respect to parental income. Our evidence suggests a nonlinear trend in which the elasticity increased for sons born between 1949 and 1953, and then declined for sons born after that. Thus depending on the time periods one compares, the trend could be upward, downward, or flat. This and other factors help explain the different estimates for the trend in mobility.

How Economic Segregation Affects Children's Educational Attainment

Economic segregation increased in the U.S. between 1970 and 1990. Three hypotheses suggest that economic segregation affects low-income childrens educational attainment, but they provide different predictions about the direction of the effect. I combine census data with data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to show that an increase in economic segregation between census tracts in the same state hardly changes overall educational attainment but it exacerbates inequality between high-income and low-income children. With overall inequality held constant changes in economic inequality within census tracts have little effect on low-income childrens educational attainment. But changes in inequality between census tracts reduce the educational attainment of low-income children. Substituting segregation between school districts for segregation between census tracts yields the same conclusions.

How Did the Increase in Economic Inequality between 1970 and 1990 Affect American Children's Educational Attainment?

This study estimates the effect of changes in economic inequality between 1970 and 1990 on children’s educational attainment. Data on individual children from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics is combined with other data on state characteristics. Growing up in a state with widespread economic inequality increases educational attainment for high‐income children and lowers it for low‐income children. Most of the effect is due to factors unassociated with family income or economic segregation in the state. These other factors include state spending for schooling and the increase in the returns to schooling over this period.

The Changing Effect of Family Background on the Incomes of American Adults

We analyze changes in the determinants of family income between 1961 and 1999, focusing on the effect of parental education, occupational rank, income, marital status, family size, region of residence, race, and ethnicity. Our data, which cover respondents between the ages of thirty and fifty-nine, come from two Occupational Changes in a Generation surveys, the General Social Survey, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The multiple correlation between respondents’ family income and their parents’ characteristics fell between 1961 to 1999. During the 1960s the overall dispersion of respondents’ family incomes also fell, so the income gap between respondents from advantaged and disadvantaged families narrowed dramatically. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s the overall dispersion of respondents’ family income rose again. But because the correlation between respondents’ family income and their parents’ characteristics was still falling, the income gap between respondents from advantaged and disadvantaged families showed no consistent trend. All else equal, the economic cost of being Black, Hispanic, or born in the South fell between 1961 and 1999. The cost of having a parent who worked in an unskilled rather than a skilled occupation fell between 1961 and 1972 but not after that. Indeed, occupational inequality among parents has probably become more important since 1972. Neither the effect of parental education nor the effect of parental income changed significantly during the years for which we have data. Daughters were considerably less mobile than sons in the 1970s, but this difference diminished in the 1980s and 1990s. Respondents with parents in the bottom quarter of the socioeconomic distribution were more likely to remain in their quartile of origin than respondents with parents in the top quarter of the distribution. We conclude by arguing that while both justice and economic efficiency require a significant amount of exchange mobility, neither justice nor efficiency implies that the correlation between family income and parental advantages ought to be zero. The case for programs that seek to reduce intergenerational inheritance depends on whether they reduce poverty and inequality.

Living Conditions among the Poor in Four Rich Countries

The share of income going to the poorest 10% of Americans is much smaller than the share of income going to the poorest 10% of Canadians, Swedes, or Germans (before unification). However, comparisons across countries of the distribution of housing conditions, consumer durables, health, and visits to the doctor and dentist suggest that compared to the average person in their country, low-income Americans are no worse off than low-income residents of other countries. But these conclusions partly depend on how income is adjusted for family size. Americans whose incomes are low for a long time may suffer more material deprivation than Canadians whose incomes are low for a long time. Conclusions about economic well-being based on current income may not rank nations the same as comparisons based on deprivation in living conditions.

Who Has Benefited from Economic Growth in the United States Since 1969? The Case of Children

One can use the Census Bureaus income statistics to show either that low-income children were considerably worse off or considerably better off in 1999 than in 1969. Likewise, one can use Census statistics to show that middle-income children gained very little or a great deal between 1969 and 1999. Resolving these disagreements requires agreeing on the best price index, the best adjustment for changes in household size, and the best treatment of noncash benefits. In addition, one must reconcile discrepancies between trends in income and consumption. Since there is no consensus on any of these matters, we investigate trends in childrens well-being using more direct measures of material well-being, such as housing conditions, neighborhood safety, motor vehicle ownership, telephone service, regular medical checkups, and food consumption. Almost all these measures suggest that low-income childrens material well-being rose between the early 1970s and the late 1990s. This finding implies that traditional price indices such as the CPI-U overstated inflation.

Using Behavioral Insights to Increase Parental Engagement: The Parents and Children Together Intervention

Parental engagement plays a key role in children’s future success. We implemented a behaviorally informed field experiment designed to increase the time parents spend using a digital library on an electronic tablet to read to their children. Behavioral tools—reminders, goal setting, and social rewards—more than doubled the amount of time parents spent reading using the electronic application (one standard deviation effect size) after the six-week intervention. The largest gains were for the most present-oriented parents. Our findings suggest substantial promise for the application of behavioral tools to parenting activities that promote investment in children’s human capital.

In Our Interest

Too often the world community stands by while nations commit or permit genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, and other atrocities. When this happens it is tempting to believe that the world community and especially its most powerful members lack moral courage or political will. But the reluctance of nations to take any but the least coercive actions when atrocities occur is the result of a collective action problem. This problem ensures that even when every nation would be better off if no other nation engaged in atrocity crimes, nations will be unlikely to intervene on their own against another nation solely to stop such atrocities. To ensure action against atrocities in the future requires a solution to this collective action problem. The principles embodied in the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) provide the most promising foundation for creating such a solution. This is why it is in every nation’s interest that all nations adopt these principles.