Unbanked and Impoverished? Exploring Banking and Poverty Interactions over time. With Lewis Warren. Journal of Consumer Affairs. 2024.
In 2019, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reported that 7.1 million households in the United States (5.4%) were unbanked and lacked a checking or savings account). Using three leading household surveys, this paper documents how the interaction between bank access and poverty has evolved over time. We present a historical time series of unbanked rates, showing high-unbanked rates for those in poverty even with increases in financial access over time. In the 1980s, 49.6% of households in poverty were unbanked while 22.8% were unbanked in 2019. Unbanked rates were even higher for Black and Hispanic households that were in poverty. In the 1980s, these groups had unbanked rates of 73.6% and 66.5% which declined to 38.4% and 31.8% in 2019, respectively. To explain differences in banking rates by race, we use binary Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions. Socio-demographic characteristics explain less than half the difference in unbanked rates for Blacks and around half for Hispanics.
Poverty and the Incidence of Material Hardship, Revisited. With John Iceland and Claire Kovach. Social Science Quarterly. 2020.
The last twenty years have seen little decline in the incidence of poverty in the United States. In fact, after a decline in poverty during the strong economy of the 1990s, poverty increased in the wake of two recessions. Much less is known about trends in material hardships, such as food insufficiency and housing problems, which are intrinsically important outcomes. Using data from the 1992-2011 Survey of Income and Program Participation, we examine trends in seven types of material hardship (food, housing, neighborhood, bill paying, health, fear of crime, and lack of consumer durables) and how their incidence by poverty status changed over the period.
We find declines in four of the seven hardships, with little change or moderate increases for the others. Declines were larger for hardship more dependent on longer-term income flows, while those more sensitive to short-term income fluctuations declined by less (or increased), suggesting that income volatility imposes important challenges for many households. Of key interest, declines in hardship were evident across all measures among the lowest-income groups over the period. This may result from a greater under-reporting of income over time and/or that family resources are not comprehensively counted in the official poverty measure.
Cash, Conditions and Child Development: Experimental Evidence from a Cash Transfer in Honduras. With Florencia Lopez-Boo. Economia. 2019.
We explore the effects of a randomly assigned conditional cash transfer in Honduras (Bono 10000) on early childhood development. We find significant impacts on cognitive development in children 0-60 months, with an average effect size of 0.13 SD. We show differential impacts by type of transfer: 0-5-year-old children from families receiving the “health” transfer, which targeted families with 0-5-year-old children only, benefited significantly from the program, whereas 0-5 year-olds in families receiving the “education” transfer, which targeted 6-18 year-olds, perceived no benefit. In comparison with other programs, the effect of this impact is sizeable (0.34 SD on average). Although the overall program appears to have slightly changed some behaviors that might affect children (i.e. decreased probability of maternal employment, and increased maternal self-esteem), we did not find heterogenous impacts of the Bono across these variables.
Results are explained mainly by differences in conditions: while the “education” component imposed conditions only on children of schooling age, the “health” transfer required regular health checkups of 0-5 year old children. The “health” transfer families were more likely to attend health checkups, which may have induced behavior changes that improved children’s health and cognitive development, including purchasing more nutritious food. These results imply that cash without well-targeted conditions attached, might not be as effective for the development of young children.
Poverty in the United States: 2022. With Emily Shrider. U.S. Census Bureau, P60-280. 2023.
Poverty in the United States: 2021. With Emily Shrider, Kalee Burns and Frances Chen. U.S. Census Bureau, P60-277. 2022.
Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019. With Em Shrider, Jessica Semega, and Melissa Kollar. U.S. Census Bureau, P60-270. 2021.
Income and Poverty in the United States: 2018. With Abinash Mohanty, Jessica Semega, and Melissa Kollar. U.S. Census Bureau, P60-266. 2020.
Working Papers
Health Inclusive Poverty Measure in the United States: 2023. SEHSD Working Paper #2024-24. 2024
A Test of Alternative Child Care Expense Capping in the Supplemental Poverty Measure. With Adrienne DiTommaso and Ani Silwal. SEHSD Working Paper #2024-11. 2024.
Updating Historical Supplemental Poverty Estimates For 2021 Methodology Changes. With Kalee Burns. SEHSD Working Paper #2024-07. 2023.
Health Inclusive Poverty Measure in the United States: 2022. SEHSD Working Paper #2024-05. 2024.
The Impact of New Disclosure Avoidance Procedures on Estimating Supplemental Poverty Rates Using Public Microdata Files. With Kalee Burns and Danielle Wilson. SEHSD Working Paper #2023-25. 2023.
Health Inclusive Poverty Measure in the United States: 2014-2021. SEHSD Working Paper #2023-17. 2023.
Examining the Impact of Medical Expenses on Supplemental Poverty Rates. SEHSD Working Paper #2022-13. 2022.
Updating the Current Population Survey Processing System and Bridging Differences in the Measurement of Poverty. With Ashley Edwards. SEHSD Working Paper 2019-05. 2019.
Critical and Sensitive Periods of Health for Cognitive Achievement in Young Peruvian Children. Job Market Paper. 2017.
The importance of family, friends and location on the development of human capital in mid-childhood and early adolescence. Working Paper. 2017.
Far From the Tree? A study on the intergenerational transfer of non-cognitive skills in Peruvian Children. Young Lives Student Paper. 2016.