TY - JOUR A1 - Biegert, Thomas A1 - Brady, David A1 - Hipp, Lena T1 - Cross-national variation in the relationship between welfare generosity and single mother employment JF - The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science N2 - Reform of the U.S. welfare system in 1996 spurred claims that cuts to welfare programs effectively incentivized single mothers to find employment. It is difficult to assess the veracity of those claims, however, absent evidence of how the relationship between welfare benefits and single mother employment generalizes across countries. This study combines data from the European Union Labour Force Survey and the U.S. Current Population Survey (1992-2015) into one of the largest samples of single mothers ever, testing the relationships between welfare generosity and single mothers’ employment and work hours. We find no consistent evidence of a negative relationship between welfare generosity and single mother employment outcomes. Rather, we find tremendous cross-national heterogeneity, which does not clearly correspond to well-known institutional variations. Our findings demonstrate the limitations of single country studies and the pervasive, salient interactions between institutional contexts and social policies. KW - single mothers KW - employment KW - welfare state benefits KW - cross-national KW - heterogeneity Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221120760 SN - 0002-7162 SN - 1552-3349 VL - 702 IS - 1 SP - 37 EP - 54 PB - SAGE Publishing CY - Thousand Oaks ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Brady, David A1 - Guerra, Christian A1 - Link, Bruce T1 - The long term relationship between childhood Medicaid expansions and severe chronic conditions in adulthood JF - Social Policy and Administration Y1 - 2023 SN - 1467-9515 VL - 58 IS - 1 SP - 39 EP - 60 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Brady, David A1 - Guerra, Christian A1 - Link, Bruce T1 - The long term relationship between medicaid expansion and adult life-threatening chronic conditions JF - Social policy and administration N2 - We test whether the expansions of children's Medicaid eligibility in the 1980s–1990s resulted in long-term health benefits in terms of severe chronic conditions. Still relatively rare in the field, we use prospective individual-level panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) along with the higher quality income measures from the Cross-National Equivalent File (adjusting for taxes, transfers and household size). We observe severe chronic conditions (high blood pressure/heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or lung disease) at ages 30–56 (average age 43.1) for 4670 respondents who were also prospectively observed during childhood (i.e., at ages 0–17). Our analysis exploits within-region temporal variation in childhood Medicaid eligibility and adjusts for state- and individual-level controls. We uniquely concentrate attention on adjusting for childhood income. A standard deviation greater childhood Medicaid eligibility significantly reduces the probability of severe chronic conditions in adulthood by 0.05 to 0.12 (16%–37.5% reduction from mean 0.32). Across the range of observed childhood Medicaid eligibility, the probability is approximately cut in half. Greater childhood Medicaid eligibility also substantially reduces childhood income disparities in severe chronic conditions. At higher levels of childhood Medicaid eligibility, we find no significant childhood income disparities in adult severe chronic conditions. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12942 SN - 0037-7643 SN - 1467-9515 VL - 58 IS - 1 SP - 39 EP - 60 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brady, David A1 - Finnigan, Ryan A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Legewie, Joscha T1 - The inheritance of race revisited BT - childhood wealth and income and black–white disadvantages in adult life chances JF - Sociological Science N2 - Vast racial inequalities continue to prevail across the United States and are closely linked to economic resources. One particularly prominent argument contends that childhood wealth accounts for black–white (BW) disadvantages in life chances. This article analyzes how much childhood wealth and childhood income mediate BW disadvantages in adult life chances with Panel Study of Income Dynamics and Cross-National Equivalent File data on children from the 1980s and 1990s who were 30+ years old in 2015. Compared with previous research, we exploit longer panel data, more comprehensively assess adult life chances with 18 outcomes, and measure income and wealth more rigorously. We find large BW disadvantages in most outcomes. Childhood wealth and income mediate a substantial share of most BW disadvantages, although there are several significant BW disadvantages even after adjusting for childhood wealth and income. The evidence mostly contradicts the prominent claim that childhood wealth is more important than childhood income. Indeed, the analyses mostly show that childhood income explains more of BW disadvantages and has larger standardized coefficients than childhood wealth. We also show how limitations in prior wealth research explain why our conclusions differ. Replication with the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a variety of robustness checks support these conclusions. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.15195/v7.a25 SN - 2330-6696 VL - 7 IS - 25 SP - 599 EP - 627 PB - Society for Sociological Science ER - TY - GEN A1 - Brady, David A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Zheng, Hui T1 - Novel estimates of mortality associated with poverty in the U.S. T2 - The journal of the American Medical Association : JAMA N2 - The US perennially has a far higher poverty rate than peer-rich democracies.1 This high poverty rate in the US presents an enormous challenge to population health given that considerable research demonstrates that being in poverty is bad for one’s health.2 Despite valuable contributions of prior research on income and mortality, the quantity of mortality associated with poverty in the US remains uknown. In this cohort study, we estimated the association between poverty and mortality and quantified the proportion and number of deaths associated with poverty. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.0276 SN - 0254-9077 SN - 1538-3598 PB - American Medical Association CY - Chicago, Ill. ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brady, David A1 - Guerra, Christian A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Link, Bruce T1 - The long arm of prospective childhood income for mature adult health in the U.S. JF - Journal of health and social behavior N2 - Pioneering scholarship links retrospective childhood conditions to mature adult health. We distinctively provide critical evidence with prospective state-of-the-art measures of parent income observed multiple times during childhood in the 1970s to 1990s. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we analyze six health outcomes (self-rated health, heart attack, stroke, life-threatening chronic conditions, non-life-threatening chronic conditions, and psychological distress) among 40- to 65-year-olds. Parent relative income rank has statistically and substantively significant relationships with five of six outcomes. The relationships with heart attack, stroke, and life-threatening chronic conditions are particularly strong. Parent income rank performs slightly better than alternative prospective and retrospective measures. At the same time, we provide novel validation on which retrospective measures (i.e., father’s education) perform almost as well as prospective measures. Furthermore, we inform several perennial debates about how relative versus absolute income and other measures of socioeconomic status and social class influence health. KW - health disparities KW - income KW - life course KW - social class Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465221081094 SN - 0022-1465 SN - 2150-6000 VL - 63 IS - 4 SP - 543 EP - 559 PB - Sage CY - Los Angeles ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brady, David A1 - Giesselmann, Marco A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Radenacker, Anke T1 - How to measure and proxy permanent income BT - evidence from Germany and the US JF - The Journal of Economic Inequality N2 - Permanent income (PI) is an enduring concept in the social sciences and is highly relevant to the study of inequality. Nevertheless, there has been insufficient progress in measuring PI. We calculate a novel measure of PI with the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Advancing beyond prior approaches, we define PI as the logged average of 20+ years of post-tax and post-transfer ("post-fisc") real equivalized household income. We then assess how well various household- and individual-based measures of economic resources proxy PI. In both datasets, post-fisc household income is the best proxy. One random year of post-fisc household income explains about half of the variation in PI, and 2-5 years explain the vast majority of the variation. One year of post-fisc HH income even predicts PI better than 20+ years of individual labor market earnings or long-term net worth. By contrast, earnings, wealth, occupation, and class are weaker and less cross-nationally reliable proxies for PI. We also present strategies for proxying PI when HH post-fisc income data are unavailable, and show how post-fisc HH income proxies PI over the life cycle. In sum, we develop a novel approach to PI, systematically assess proxies for PI, and inform the measurement of economic resources more generally. KW - Income KW - Permanent income KW - Lifetime income KW - Measurement KW - Longitudinal and panel data KW - Social class Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-017-9363-9 SN - 1569-1721 SN - 1573-8701 VL - 16 IS - 3 SP - 321 EP - 345 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER -