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The paper examines changes in patterns of work, poverty, and the relationship between work and poverty between 2005 and 2013. It also explores the implications of heterogeneous work-poverty dynamics for the distribution of poverty risk across race and sex groups. The researchers' analyses address three specific objectives. First, they track changes in work and poverty status among householders during the 2005 to 2013 period. Second, they use a regression-based decomposition approach to quantify how shifts in hours and weeks worked among householders contributed to changes in poverty between 2005 and 2013. Third, they track race- and sex-based differences in work-poverty dynamics during this period. They specifically quantify how changes in work patterns among particular race- and sex- groups affected the distribution of poverty risk between groups. Their results demonstrate that changing patterns of work had a large, but not exclusive effect on poverty rates during the recession. In contrast, changes in work explain very little of post-recession poverty dynamics. They also find evidence of systematic variation in work-poverty dynamics between race and sex group. Their findings show a male and minority disadvantage during the recession and uniquely persistent disadvantages among non-Hispanic black males in the post-recession period.

Citation

Thiede, B., Kim, H. (2015). Changing Patterns of Work and Poverty During and After the Great Recession. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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This study was part of the Department of Labor Scholars Program, and was produced outside of CEO’s standard research development process.