Nine percent of young U.S. children live in deep poverty, with state rates ranging from 17 percent in Mississippi to 4 percent in Utah. The families of these children have incomes below 50 percent of the federal poverty line, or less than $10,289 for a family of one parent and two children.1 These figures, based on 2019 data, predate the COVID-19 pandemic, which likely drove more families with young children into poverty and deep poverty given the large increase in unemployment related to workplace closures, lack of child care, and other pandemic conditions.2 While families in deep poverty may qualify for various forms of assistance, many experience severe financial hardship due to the very limited support provided by public benefits. In 16 states, cash assistance in the form of TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) is provided to only 10 percent or fewer of families in poverty. Monthly TANF benefits vary across states, with 18 states providing less than $356 for a single parent family of three.3 Even SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), a benefit credited with reducing child poverty by 28 percent, leaves families with unmet needs.4 A recent analysis showed that the maximum SNAP benefit fell short of meeting monthly food costs by about $46 per family member.5 Although housing is the largest portion of most families’ expenses, federal rental assistance is available to only 22 percent of lowincome families with children, and only six states supplement this support with housing assistance targeted to families.6 Both a lack of material resources and parental stress associated with poverty have been identified as key pathways to worse health, developmental, and school-related outcomes of poor children compared to their non-poor peers.7 Although research focused specifically on young children in deep poverty is limited, the conditions of deep poverty suggest that these children may be at exceptionally high risk of poor outcomes. First, research has shown that poverty experienced in early childhood is especially detrimental to children’s development.8 Second, deep poverty may lead to especially high levels of stress among parents struggling to meet basic needs, and stress is associated with less optimal parenting behavior.9 Third, other factors associated with poverty and child well-being, such as poor birth outcomes and family social isolation, may be more prevalent among families with very little or no income. Understanding more about the early health and development of young children in deep poverty and related risk factors can inform policies tailored to this group of vulnerable families. To date, most recommendations explicitly targeted to reducing the number of families in deep poverty have focused mainly on policies that increase family income. The National Academy of Sciences report, Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty, examines two policy packages that meet the goal of reducing both poverty and deep poverty by 50 percent. These packages include an increased minimum wage, a child allowance, and housing assistance.10Based on an earlier examination of young children and families in deep poverty, NCCP has recommended a mix of policies to increase family income and ensure immediate and longer-term supports for children’s healthy development in the family and in early care and education settings.11 This report presents new analyses with more recent data that highlight the needs of young children and families in deep poverty, along with updated recommendations. The key sections of the report are: ƒ A description of methods ƒ Findings that show: Œ Differences in health and development indicators across income groups Œ Differences in family and community factors across income groups Œ Racial/ethnic disparities in young children’s experience of deep poverty ƒ Summary ƒ Recommendations

On behalf of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ), I am pleased to respond to Urban Institute’s (Urban) process evaluation, which identified strategies to better understand and measure program performance. The Police Athletic League’s (PAL) summer youth programs—Playstreets and VIBE—represent visible and popular parts of the City’s play-based programming strategy to reduce crime and victimization for vulnerable communities and their young people. We are heartened that the process evaluation conducted identifies the positive achievements of each of these programs while identifying opportunities to more deliberately integrate them into our year-round, comprehensive interventions. The Playstreets and VIBE programs are part of the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP), a citywide strategy initiated by the de Blasio administration to increase community safety and well-being and build strong neighborhoods. MAP is a multiyear, multi-agency strategy focused on 15 public housing developments and their surrounding neighborhoods that, at inception, accounted for almost 20 percent of violent crime in the City’s public housing. Unsurprisingly, the MAP developments are in neighborhoods that have historically led the city in other economic and social stressors—poverty, unemployment, incarceration, and chronic disease. MAP’s driving principle is that public safety requires addressing disparities in opportunity, trust, and physical design in the places that need it most.

This report, prepared for the African American Leadership Alliance MKE (AALAM), presents an index of African American community well-being in Milwaukee and the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas. The index is based on Black community status for each metro area on 30 indicators of community well-being, in areas such as employment; income, poverty, and social conditions; community health; and conditions for youth and children. Ranks on all of the component indicators were then synthesized into a composite index, ranking each of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas on the wellbeing of their respective African American communities. This study finds, on almost all indicators examined, that Black Milwaukee consistently ranks at or near the bottom compared to African American communities in large metropolitan areas across the country. On the composite index of African American well-being, Milwaukee ranks worst, by a fairly wide margin. The AALAM aims “to redefine Milwaukee as a top-ranking city for African Americans by 2025.” This study reveals the magnitude of that challenge.

Alarming increases in US maternal mortality have generated national attention, a search for policy solutions to promote maternal health, and an increased recognition of how important the postpartum period is for mothers' and infants' health and well-being. Without access to consistent, comprehensive health insurance coverage, many new mothers can face extreme challenges obtaining the care they need to support their and their infants' health. This analysis uses 2015-18 data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) to document access and affordability challenges facing uninsured new mothers and 2015-17 data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment and Monitoring System (PRAMS), a state-specific surveillance system of pregnancies resulting in a live birth, to describe the health status of women who lost Medicaid coverage following their pregnancies. Together, our analysis provides new evidence on the access and affordability barriers that could be reduced and the health problems that could be treated if these uninsured new mothers were to gain coverage through a postpartum Medicaid extension or broader Medicaid expansion. Key Findings  Approximately 11.5 percent of new mothers nationwide were uninsured from 2015 to 2018; just over half of those uninsured new mothers were Hispanic, and close to two-thirds lived in the South.  About 1 in 5 uninsured new moms reported at least one unmet need for medical care because of cost in the past year, and over half were very worried about paying their medical bills.  Roughly half of all uninsured new mothers reported that losing Medicaid or other coverage after pregnancy was the reason they were uninsured, suggesting that they would likely benefit from an extension of postpartum Medicaid coverage.  Almost one-third of women who lost Medicaid coverage and became uninsured in the postpartum period were obese before their pregnancy, and 18 percent reported either gestational diabetes or pregnancy-related hypertension, all conditions that require ongoing monitoring and care after giving birth.  About one-third of new moms who lost Medicaid were recovering from a cesarean section, and just over one-quarter reported being depressed sometimes, often, or always in the months after giving birth. Altogether, our findings indicate that many uninsured new mothers report trouble affording care and have both physical and mental health needs that would benefit from the more consistent access to coverage and care that expanding Medicaid would provide. These findings are particularly relevant given the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic crisis, which will put even more women at risk of uninsurance and in need of affordable coverage options before, during, and after pregnancy.

Studies document large differences in the amount of time mothers spend in childcare by maternal education, even when controlling for characteristics such as income, employment hours, and work schedules. One possible explanation for this observed difference is that highly educated mothers find time in childcare to be more enjoyable. To inform this hypothesis, we examine education-based differences in mothers’ average feelings during their time in childcare using pooled data from the 2010, 2012, and 2013 Well-being Modules of the American Time Use Survey. Among all mothers, spending time in childcare is associated with higher positive feelings than is spending time in other activities. However, highly educated mothers do not enjoy their time in childcare more than less-educated mothers. Findings are robust to controls for mother fixed effects.

Working longer – in the sense of choosing to delay retirement beyond traditional retirement ages – is widely proposed as the best way for older Americans to boost their fragile retirement security. But the policy goal of increasing labor force participation among older Americans is fundamentally in tension with a precarious low-wage economy because jobs that feature low wages, high turnover rates, and few benefits do not provide a solid foundation for sustained employment at older ages. Many Americans in their 50s are already out of the labor force, and many retire involuntarily before traditional retirement ages – a situation that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Better jobs for prime-age workers help to pave the way for longer working lives. I outline three specific policy proposals: improved minimum wage, fair workweek laws, and a universal paid family and medical leave benefit. As others have argued, these policies would improve the well-being of prime-age workers. What has been less appreciated is that these policies would also put older Americans in a better position to extend their working years.

Commuting imposes opportunity costs on travelers since those with long commutes have less time to participate in other activities. This paper examines how commute duration is associated with activity patterns. It utilizes a two-day time use survey administered in the United Kingdom in 2014 and 2015. Focusing on full-time employees and controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, we regress time spent engaging in 22 different activities on commute duration using OLS and Cragg two-part hurdle modeling. We separately test the effects of commute duration on activity participation for men versus women and for single persons versus persons in couples. We also report the subjective well-being (SWB), specifically the hedonic affect, associated with these activities as determined by using fixed-effects panel regression. The estimations suggest that commutes are associated with time constraints and entail trade-offs, with longer commutes being associated with significantly less time engaging in most of our activities including sleep, cooking, housework, shopping/accessing services, arts/entertainment activities, TV/music time, computer games and other computer use, visiting with others, sports/exercise/outdoor activities, hobbies, volunteering, and non-work travel. Those with longer commutes are found to tend to engage in more of two activities: work and eating out. The activities those with longer commutes tend to forego run the gamut from high-SWB to low-SWB. Given that the lowest-SWB activity in our sample is commuting itself, it appears as if the substitution of nearly any activity for commuting may bring emotional benefits. In all, the results suggest that longer commutes are associated with significant emotional costs.

In this document we describe a project to link records from the 1940 U.S. Census to records for individuals in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The project is part of a larger effort to conduct parallel linkages to the 1940 Census for respondents to the PSID, the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), and the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS). Each study contains sample members who were alive at the time of the 1940 federal census and were thus enumerated (along with their families and household members). These five ongoing longitudinal studies are central components of America’s data infrastructure for interdisciplinary research on aging and the life course; physical and mental health, disability, and well-being; later-life work, economic well-being, and retirement; end-of-life issues, and many other topics. Adding information about sample members from the 1940 Census expands the utility of all five projects and enables important research on the effects of early life social, economic, environmental, contextual, and other factors on subsequent life outcomes. For a longer discussion of the overall linking project, see Warren, Helgertz, and Xu (2020)...

Although public debate ensues over whether parents or nonparents have higher levels of emotional well-being, scholars suggest that being a parent is associated with a mixed bag of emotions. Drawing on the American Time Use Survey for the years 2010, 2012, and 2013 and unique measures of subjective well-being that capture positive and negative emotions linked to daily activities, we “unpack” this mixed bag. We do so by examining contextual variation in the parenting emotions gap based on activity type, whether parents’ children were present, parenting stage, and respondent’s gender. We found that parenting was associated with more positive emotions than nonparenting, but also more negative emotions. This pattern existed only during housework and leisure, not during paid work. Moreover, patterns in positive emotions existed only when parents’ children were present; patterns in negative emotions were primarily observed during earlier stages of parenting. Results were similar for men and women.

This paper examines inequality in both leisure and consumption over the past four decades. Using time use surveys stretching from 1975 to 2016, we estimate the distribution of leisure time conditional on hours worked and other individual level and family level characteristics. We show that these characteristics, especially when including work hours, explain most of the long run variation in leisure. We then use these estimates to predict the distribution of leisure using work hours and other characteristics in the Consumer Expenditure Survey, a survey that also provides detailed information on consumption. The advantage of this approach is that it gives us measures of consumption and leisure at the family level within a single data source. Combining consumption and leisure allows us to characterize more accurately changes in the distribution of well-being. We find that leisure time is highest for families at the bottom of the consumption distribution, and typically declines monotonically as consumption rises. However, the consumption-leisure gradient is small. We find noticeable differences across family types, with the gradient being largest for single parent families and single individuals and smallest for families with a head age 65 or older. The negative relationship between consumption and leisure appears strongest during the period around the Great Recession. We find that including both leisure and consumption, as opposed to just consumption, in a measure of economic well-being results in less inequality. The negative association between leisure and consumption is a sufficient condition for this result. However, the degree to which leisure inequality offsets consumption inequality depends on the valuation of leisure.

This report focuses on the health and well-being of Illinois children, as well as disparities in the social determinants of health that have historically contributed to racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes. The main argument of the report is that there are significant racial and ethnic disparities in socioeconomic indicators that contribute to health inequalities among different groups of Illinois children.

Numerous articles and books are written describing the apparent shrinking, decline, or death of the American middle class. 1 In this chapter, I present several of the key facts and review the veracity of some of the more widely held conceptions. Income inequality in the United States has grown in the last 30 years; the middle deciles have made significantly less progress in pre-tax income than the top decile. However, the income distribution is not becoming bimodal; instead there is a noticeable movement of households from the middle of the distribution to the upper part of the distribution. 2 Households in the middle of the income distribution are experiencing positive growth in income and consumption, though at a slower pace than the growth at the top. In the last 30 years, the likelihood of owning a home, owning two cars, or sending a child to college has risen for households across the income distribution including those in the middle class. Disturbingly, lower GDP growth and increased inequality in the distribution of that growth have combined to reduce the probability that children out-earn their parents at similar ages (Chetty et al. 2017). And measures of life expectancy and subjective well-being fell for some groups (Case and Deaton 2017; Blanchflower and Oswald 2019), although life expectancies in aggregate are again rising.

Objectives Ethnoracial disparities in sleep health across the lifecourse, may underlie other disparities in health and well-being among adults in the United States (U.S.). We evaluated if socioenvironmental stressors, which likely differ by the race/ethnicity of college students, may contribute to sleep disparities in this demographic group. Design/Measurements National Health Interview Survey data pooled from 2004 to 2017 were used to test the hypothesis that ethnoracial disparities in sleep exist among college students residing in dormitories in the U.S. Setting Nationally representative survey data. Participants A total of 2,119 college students residing in dormitories (71% White, 16% Black/African-American, 7% Hispanic/Latino, and 6% Asian) participated in the study. Results The prevalence of short sleep duration was higher among Black/African-Americans than among White students, but not among Hispanics/Latinos and Asians, after adjusting for age, gender, and region of residence. In fully adjusted models, Black/African-Americans, although no longer statistically significant after adjustments, were more likely to report short sleep duration compared with White students (adjusted prevalence ratio; [aPR] = 1.30, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.98-1.71). The prevalence of separate insomnia symptoms did not differ by ethnoracial group in adjusted models. Only Asian students had a higher prevalence (aPR = 1.40, 95% CI: 1.12-1.75) of nonrestorative sleep than White students. Conclusion Black/African-American but not Hispanic/Latino or Asian college students were more likely to report short sleep duration than Whites. Insomnia symptoms did not differ between groups, while Asians experienced more nonrestorative sleep. Future studies should investigate the socioenvironmental causes of disparities using longitudinal designs, larger sample sizes, better socioeconomic status (SES) indicators, and objective sleep measures.

Over 1.5 million new jobs need to be filled by 2026 for medical assistants, nursing aides, and home care aides, many of which will work in the long-term services and supports (LTSS) sector. Using 16 years of data from the American Time Use Survey, we examined the financial vulnerability of high-skill and low-skill LTSS workers in comparison with other health care workers, while providing insight into their well-being by measuring time spent on work and nonwork activities. We found that, regardless of skill status, working in LTSS was associated with lower wages and an increased likelihood of experiencing poverty compared with other health care workers. Results from time diary data indicated that the LTSS workforce spent a greater share of their time working and commuting to work. Low-skill LTSS workers were hardest hit, spending more time on paid and unpaid activities, such as household and child care responsibilities.

Water is critical to human development and well-being. Its importance is not only captured explicitly in the Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6) regarding universal access to safe, affordable, and adequate water and sanitation, but also is embedded within the goals on energy, food security, poverty, energy, health, disaster risk, and cities. In 2016-2018, the United Nations and World Bank Group convened a High Level Panel on Water to accelerate progress towards SDG6, which identified a number of ways in which such progress was off-track, particularly in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). This panel recommended an agenda to enable stakeholders to make decisions and take action. Prior to decision-making, it is necessary for stakeholders "to understand the quantity, quality, distribution, use, and risks of the water they have." This understanding in turn depends on investments in institutional and technical infrastructure for "water-related data as well as the systems to share, analyze, and take decisions with this data" (United Nations and World Bank 2018). This makes sense-decisions require information based on data. But what data investments need to be made? What should water data infrastructure do? "Water-related" data is collected on many topics by many different actors, each in a different format and quality fit for a different, often highly localized primary use, even if secondary use of such data by other parties may be beneficial. Well-informed decisions may require data to be integrated from many of these different sources. Currently, the typical data-to-decisions cycle can be long, winding, difficult, and full of uncertainty. For example, a regional water infrastructure planner may need to answer many interrelated questions in order to even begin costing out alternative scenarios of water supply improvements in an application to a government agency or donor organization: • How many people live in this region, and how are they spatially distributed among settlements of different sizes? • Where do existing water points serve each of these settlements? What types of water points are they, and what levels of service in terms of water quantity, quality, travel times, and wait times do they provide? What are people paying for water from these points? Where do people retrieve water if not from one of these points? • How much water is being used, including for domestic, agricultural, livestock, and commercial purposes? • What are prevailing rates of waterborne disease in these settlements, and in their vulnerable subpopulations? • What is the potential to increase safely managed water supply quantity? What are the surface and groundwater availability conditions in the

While research on immigrant women’s labor market incorporation has increased in recent years, systematic comparisons of employment trajectories by national origin and over time remain rare, and the literature remains dominated by the male experience. Especially lacking are studies that take both individual factors and larger migration dynamics into account, limiting our understanding of women’s contributions to the economic well-being of immigrant families, and of the process of incorporation more broadly. Using U.S. Census and ACS data from 1990 to 2016, we construct synthetic cohorts by national origin, period, and age at arrival to track their labor force participation over time. We construct a typology of national origin trajectories and then model them adjusting for individual characteristics and gendered dynamics of migration flows, namely the sex ratio, share of women arriving single, and share of men arriving with a college education. Results indicate that immigrant women tend to gradually join the workforce over time, though with significant variation in starting levels and growth rates. Cohorts from Mexico, Central America, and South America exhibited a delayed pattern of incorporation (though Mexican women start at lower levels than others), while women from India, Korea and other Asian countries followed an accelerated incorporation trajectory from very low starting rates. Those from Europe, Africa, China, Vietnam, and Canada showed gradual incorporation while Filipinas and Caribbeans exhibited continuous, intensive employment. We show that historically produced gendered dynamics of migration flows explain a substantial share of national origin variation in workforce incorporation.

In this document we describe a project to link records from the 1940 U.S. Census to records for respondents to the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS). The project is part of a larger effort to conduct parallel linkages to the 1940 Census for respondents to the HRS, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), and the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS). In each cohort study, many sample members were alive at the time of the 1940 federal census and were thus enumerated (along with their families and household members). These five ongoing longitudinal studies are central components of America’s data infrastructure for interdisciplinary research on aging and the life course; physical and mental health, disability, and well-being; later-life work, economic well-being, and retirement; end-of-life issues, and many other topics. Adding information about sample members from the 1940 Census will expand the utility of all five projects and will enable important research on the effects of early life social, economic, environmental, contextual, and other factors on subsequent life outcomes. Broadly, the project described in this document involved (1) preparing and formatting data files containing respondents’ identifying information; (2) deploying machine learning algorithms to mechanically link project records to the 1940 U.S. Census; (3) hand linking records that could not be machine linked and hand-verifying a portion of those that could; and (4) documenting the new measures and making them available as part of the HRS’s restricted access dissemination systems in a manner consistent with HRS respondents’ privacy rights. In this document we describe the linking procedures, explain the structure of the resulting linked files and how they can be accessed, and provide information about linkage rates and the reliability and validity of the links.

Among children under age nine, there is wide variation in rates of deep poverty across the states, ranging from 4 percent to 17 percent. Large racial disparities exist nationally and within most states. In the U.S., 5 percent of young white children and 3 percent of Asian American children live in deep poverty, while these percentages are more than double for other racial/ethnic groups of young children: 18 percent of Black children, 15 percent of American Indian and Native Alaskan children, and 11 percent of Hispanic/Latino children under age 9 are in families with incomes below 50 percent of the federal poverty line. For all but a few of the indicators we compared across income groups, children in deep poverty were the most likely to experience early conditions and circumstances that make them vulnerable to future health, development, and learning problems. These indicators include low birth weight, a physical condition or health problem that limits activities, an intellectual disability or developmental delay, participation in early intervention or special education, and less positive behavior. (As mentioned earlier, participation in early intervention and special education may also reduce risks posed by conditions that make children eligible for these programs.) The parents of young children in deep poverty were the most likely to have a mental health condition, to be a single parent, to lack a high school diploma, and to be unemployed. These parents were also the least likely to report that they can count on people in their neighborhood for help when they need it. For some indicators, families in income groups other than deep poverty showed the greatest disadvantage. Young children in poverty were the most likely to be obese. Low-income children were the most likely to lack health insurance, and they also had the highest prevalence of elevated blood lead levels, although percentages did not differ significantly across income groups. Among parents, those in poverty were the most likely to lack health insurance. Although the results suggest less optimal outcomes and family circumstances for poor and low-income children, the recommendations that follow focus on families with young children in deep poverty since indicators for this group suggest exceptional risks to children’s development and life opportunities. These recommendations incorporate income support policies targeting families in deep poverty into a two-generation approach that include investments in direct support for parents’ health and mental health, child birth outcomes, and children’s development. A body of theory and research suggests that policies aimed at promoting work and higher family income alongside the provision of other supports for parent well-being and children’s development can offer benefits for children that are larger than policies that focus solely on adult workforce development or children’s development.26 In addition, the recommendations call for policies that directly promote the integration of these supports so that they provide maximum opportunities for families to thrive.

13.0% of middle-aged adults (age 35- 64) live alone in rural (non-metropolitan) counties vs. 12.3% in urban counties. Of the 50 counties with the highest percentage of middle-aged adults living alone, 37 are rural. Health care providers in these counties identified several characteristics related to high rates of middle-aged adults living alone, including socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., income, marital status, age distribution), lack of social support, personal choice, housing issues, and health status. Practical challenges for middle-aged adults living alone in rural counties included limited resources, transportation, accessing health care, loneliness, substance use, and difficulty with self-care. While many individuals live alone by choice and thrive in doing so, some people experience unique barriers to health and well-being when living alone. These barriers play out uniquely in rural areas and require tailored interventions to support these individuals.