Journal of Family and Economic Issues最新文献

Financial well-being is becoming more prominent in policy, research, and the financial sector. However, there is a lack of understanding of its meaning, and the vast majority of financial well-being research employs quantitative methods whereas recent literature reviews advocate for qualitative studies into the meaning of financial well-being and its associations with age. We contribute to that by conducting exploratory qualitative research into the phenomenon of perceived financial well-being and its components. It is based on three studies each of which used in-depth semi-structured interviews (N = 47). The first key finding is that youth perceive financial well-being to be comprised of three components: keeping the current lifestyle and making ends meet; achieving desired lifestyle; and achieving financial freedom. In contrast, older groups distinguish only two: keeping and achieving the lifestyle in the present and in the future. The second finding is that the definition of financial freedom differs across age groups. Young people aspire to become financially independent, while middle-aged individuals prioritize supporting their children, and older people are afraid of becoming a financial burden. Third, regardless of age, many do not plan, save or invest for securing their financial well-being. We conclude by proposing implications for increasing financial well-being in different age groups, and suggesting paths for further investigation.

We examine how expenditure changes at retirement during an institutionally and economically uncertain period when a series of pension reforms and cuts were implemented. Overall, we fail to confirm that consumption declines at retirement using data from Greece (2008-2018). Any estimated declines come from turbulent years when major pension cuts were applied. Expenditure drops at retirement were due to pension income shocks, especially for those who were particularly dependent on pension income. Further checks support the presence of an income shock mechanism for retirees who are relatively more treated during the crisis sub-period. Given an aging population and the ongoing global turbulence, our results offer valuable insights.

Gender wage gaps are frequently explained as resulting from direct discrimination, employers' preferences over personality traits, and differing labor force attachment. We rely on a natural quasi-experiment using exogenous changes in state-level, same-sex adoption laws to distinguish between the competing explanations of the gender wage gap. Estimates from a differences-in-differences model show the wage gap between lesbians and heterosexual women shrank or inverted in those states which legalized adoption by same-sex couples. The wage gap did not change for men. This supports the parenthood hypothesis as a viable explanation for a portion of the gender wage gap.

This study investigates the extent to which the household living arrangements of older adults influences their experiences of material hardship. Using data from the 2014 Panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we run linear probability models with individual fixed effects to estimate the likelihood that a change in living arrangements predicts a change in food insecurity, housing hardship and utility hardship. Although household living arrangements are associated with reports of material hardship for older adults, individual fixed effect models point to a reduced role for the change in living arrangements on the change in the probability of experiencing material hardship. For older adults, we find that moving into a non-family household increases the risk of housing hardship. This study illustrates how the risk of material hardship related to family living arrangements changes over the life course. We call for increased attention to the risk of material hardship for older adults living alone, those in multigenerational living arrangements, and non-family households.

The purpose of this descriptive study was to explore factors associated with perceptions of grandparent responsibility for grandchildren in three-generation households, focusing especially on a comparison of grandparents' and parents' financial contributions to the household and ethnicity of grandparent(s). The analysis used information about three-generation families in the 2011-2015 American Community Survey, retrieved through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. In 30% of these families, grandparents said they were "primarily responsible" for the grandchildren, even though the child's parent was also in the household. Logistic regression models showed that grandparents who contributed a larger share of household income and grandparents who were householders were significantly more likely to report being primarily responsible for grandchildren in three-generation households, suggesting that the distribution of financial resources (or resource balance) within the household was associated with perceptions of responsibility. However, grandparents' race and ethnicity moderated this association, indicating that cultural norms may intersect with resources in shaping these reports. The findings suggest that perceived responsibilities of grandparents in three-generation households may be shaped by the balance of financial resources among household members, but also by cultural norms of grandparenting.

This study sets out to examine whether depressive morbidity varies by status of financial indebtedness of a spouse or cohabiting partner. For this purpose, individuals aged between 20 and 60 with a different-sex spouse/cohabiting partner with a registration date for a debt at the Swedish Enforcement Authority (SEA) during 2017 (n = 6979) are followed-up for a 2-year period for prescriptions of antidepressants and compared with a sample from the general Swedish population (n = 29,708). The analysis is based on penalized maximum likelihood logistic regressions. Both women and men were more likely to suffer from depressive morbidity if the spouse/cohabiting partner had been registered at the SEA in 2017 and was still active for a debt in the SEA's register in 2018 (OR 1.31 and OR 1.57, respectively), irrespective of their own health, employment, socioeconomic status, and other background variables. This also held true for men if a wife/cohabiting partner had been registered at the SEA in 2017 but was no longer active for a debt in the SEA's register in 2018 (OR 1.29). For women, on the other hand, only those with no history (11-year period) of prescription of psychotropic medications were also at an enhanced risk of depressive morbidity if a husband/cohabiting partner had gone from being registered for a debt at the SEA in 2017, to not being registered as active for a debt in the SEA's register in 2018 (OR 1.24). The results reinforce the importance of acknowledging that negative effects of financial indebtedness extend beyond the individual debtor.

This study examined whether the addition of household resources via the receipt of the U.S. Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) affects short-term patterns of parents' time investments in children, including time spent engaged with children and in activities related to their education. Using difference-in-differences analyses that exploit seasonal variation in federal EITC outlays with nationally representative time-diary data from the 2003 to 2017 American Time Use Survey-Current Population Survey (ATUS-CPS; N = 61,355) merged with state-level data from the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research (UKCPR) National Welfare Database, I estimate the plausibly causal effects of predicted EITC receipt on various measures of parents' time investments in their children. I examine parents' time spent directly engaged with children in enriching activities like play and reading and in activities related to children's education among a low-socioeconomic sample (parents with less than a college degree). I find few associations between monthly federal EITC outlays and immediate changes in parents' time investments, although there was evidence that greater EITC outlays predicted small increases in mothers' time spent reading with or to children, particularly among mothers with young children, but also small decreases in fathers' time spent in activities with children, particularly school-age children. Findings suggest that increases in household resources, even relatively small and annual increases, may have short-term effects on parent-child interactions and time use.