Unemployment in the Great Recession: Did the Housing Market Crisis Prevent the Unemployed from Moving to Take Jobs?

2012 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 520-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry S Farber
Keyword(s):  
Housing Market ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Home Ownership ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
Displaced Workers ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
Reduced Mobility ◽  
New Jobs

The labor market in the Great Recession and its aftermath is characterized by great difficulty in escaping unemployment. I present two empirical analyses of a particular explanation for that difficulty, that the housing market crisis has prevented the unemployed from selling their homes and moving to take new jobs. First, I examine post-job-loss mobility rates by home ownership status using data from the Displaced Workers Survey. Second, I examine mobility rates for unemployed homeowners and renters from the month-to-month CPS match. Neither analysis provides any support for the idea that the housing market crisis has reduced mobility of the unemployed.

scholarly journals The Employment Effects of State Hiring Credits

ILR Review ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (5) ◽  
pp. 1111-1145 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Neumark ◽  
Diego Grijalva
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Employment Growth ◽  
Job Creation ◽  
Employment Effects ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Job Growth ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
New Jobs ◽  
Recession Period

State and federal policymakers grappling with the aftermath of the Great Recession sought ways to spur job creation, in many cases adopting hiring credits to encourage employers to create new jobs. Virtually no evidence is available, however, on the effects of these kinds of counter-recessionary hiring credits, with the only evidence coming from much earlier studies of the federal New Jobs Tax Credit in the 1970s. This article provides evidence on the effects of state hiring credits on job growth. Some specific types of hiring credits—including those targeting the unemployed, those that allow states to recapture credits when job creation goals are not met, and refundable hiring credits—appear to have succeeded in boosting job growth, particularly during the Great Recession period and perhaps also during recessions in general. At the same time, some evidence suggests that these credits can generate much more hiring than net employment growth, consistent with the credits encouraging churning of employees that raises the cost of producing jobs through hiring credits.

Recent Trends in the Material Well-Being of the Working Class in America

2021 ◽  
Vol 695 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-91
Author(s):  
James P. Ziliak
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Insurance Coverage ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Absolute Poverty ◽  
Earnings Growth ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Using Data

I examine trends in the material well-being of working-class households using data from the Current Population Survey in the two decades surrounding the Great Recession. In the years leading up to the Great Recession, average earnings, homeownership, and insurance coverage all fell, and absolute poverty and food insecurity accelerated. After-tax incomes were, for the most part, stagnant. The economic hemorrhaging either abated or reversed, however, in the decade after the Great Recession, especially for the least skilled and for households headed by a Hispanic person. This includes robust earnings growth, which led to declines in earnings inequality, absolute poverty, and food insecurity, coupled with increased insurance coverage and a modest rebound in after-tax incomes. As many of these recent advances likely stalled with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I discuss various policy options.

Disparate Recoveries: Wealth, Race, and the Working Class after the Great Recession

2021 ◽  
Vol 695 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-192
Author(s):  
Fenaba R. Addo ◽  
William A. Darity
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Net Worth ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Consumer Finances ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship

What does it mean to be working class in a society of extreme racial wealth inequality? Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we investigate the wealth holdings of Black, Latinx, and white working-class households during the post–Great Recession (pre–COVID-19) period that spanned 2010 to 2019. We then explore the relationship between working-class and middle-class attainment using a wealth-based metric. We find that, in terms of their net worth, fewer Black working-class households benefitted from the economic recovery than white working-class households. Among white households, the working class saw the greatest increase in wealth in both absolute and relative terms. Working-class households were less likely to be middle class as defined by their wealth holdings, and Black and Latinx households were also less likely to be middle class. For Black households, racial identity is a stronger predictor of wealth attainment than occupational sector.

The Distribution of Wealth in America (1983–2013)

2020 ◽  
pp. 219-242
Author(s):  
John C. Weicher
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Home Ownership ◽  
Household Wealth ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Home Values

This chapter covers a period of rising wealth followed by abrupt decline. Between 1983 and 2007, real median household wealth rose by 70 percent, from $80,000 to $136,000 (in 2013 dollars). This increase disappeared completely, however, in the Great Recession; by 2010, median wealth had dropped by 40 percent, to $82,000, and it did not improve by 2013. The typical household of 2013 was no wealthier than the typical household of 1983. In addition, the distribution became markedly more unequal during the Great Recession; the richest 10 percent experienced a smaller reduction of 10 percent. For families in the middle, the most important asset was their home, but in 2013, fewer of them were homeowners and home values dropped for those who were. The declines in home ownership and home values accounted for most of the loss in wealth for middle-wealth families as a group.

Integrating models of marital functioning to understand the mental health consequences of the Great Recession

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (7) ◽  
pp. 2118-2135
Author(s):  
Esra Ascigil ◽  
Emre Selcuk ◽  
Gul Gunaydin ◽  
Anthony D. Ong
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Negative Affect ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Health Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marital Functioning ◽  
Family Stress Model ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Financial Events ◽  
Using Data

It is well established that negative financial events during macroeconomic crises have a significant impact on individuals’ mental health. Much less is known about how and for whom economic crises impact mental health. Using data from the Midlife in the United States study, we examine the mental health impact of the Great Recession in the U.S. Drawing on predictions from the Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model of Marriage and the Family Stress Model, we examined whether increases in marital disagreements mediated the link between recession adversities (e.g., unemployment, increased debt, loss of a home) and mental health following the recession (2013–2014), controlling for prerecession marital disagreements and mental health (2004–2006). We found that those who experienced a greater number of recession adversities showed increased marital disagreements following the Great Recession, which were in turn associated with poorer mental health (negative affect and affective disorder). These associations held after controlling for prerecession levels of gender, age, race, and education. Furthermore, those who had lower income before the recession experienced greater increases in negative affect following the recession. These findings highlight the importance of marital processes in how the Great Recession is linked to mental health.

UK Unemployment in the Great Recession

2010 ◽  
Vol 214 ◽  
pp. R3-R25 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N.F. Bell ◽  
David G. Blanchflower
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Sharp Increase ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
Small Rise ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
The Unemployed

This paper considers some of the implications of the increase in UK unemployment since the beginning of the Great Recession. The major finding is that the sharp increase in unemployment and decrease in employment is largely concentrated on the young. This has occurred at a time when the size of the youth cohort is large. As a response to a lack of jobs there has been a substantial increase in applications to university, although there has only been a small rise in the number of places available. Further we find evidence that the unemployed have particularly low levels of well-being, are depressed, have low levels of life satisfaction, have difficulties paying their bills and are especially likely to be in financial difficulties.

Populist Social Movements of the Great Recession*

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paris Aslanidis
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Unified Framework ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The People ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Action Frame

Social movement scholars have thus far failed to give populism its deserved attention and to incorporate it into their field of study. Although sociologists, political scientists, and historians have explored diverse facets of the intersection of populism and social dissent, there has been no concerted effort towards building a comprehensive framework for the study of populist mobilization, despite its growing significance in the past decades. In this article I combine insights from populism studies, social movement scholarship, and social psychology to build a unified framework of analysis for populist social movements. I suggest populism is best understood as a collective action frame employed by movement entrepreneurs to construct a resonant collective identity of “the People” and to challenge elites. I argue that populism depends on the politicization of citizenship, and I apply this framework to the movements of the Great Recession to classify Occupy Wall Street and the European indignados as instances of a populist wave of mobilization, using data from archival material and a set of semistructured interviews with Greek activists.

Housing Inheritance and Inequality: A Response to Watt

1995 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Hamnett
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Home Ownership ◽  
Housing Tenure ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Social Characteristics ◽  
The North ◽  
Empirically Supported ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Unemployed

Paul Watt's (1993) response to my article ‘A nation of inheritors?’ (Hamnett, 1991) raises some interesting and worthwhile questions about the class basis of housing inheritance which I would like to address and clarify. To recapitulate briefly, my article attempted to assess the validity of Saunders's (1986, 1990) arguments regarding the importance of home ownership and housing inheritance in the creation of a new consumption cleavage independent of social class. Using data from a survey of beneficiaries I argued that although housing inheritance is distributed across the class spectrum, the incidence of inheritance is far greater amongst home owners, higher social classes and those living in southern Britain (where home ownership is longer established) than it is among council tenants, the lower social classes and those living in the north. I argued that there is nothing inherent in a person's social class, housing tenure or location which makes inheritance more likely. On the contrary, the determinants of housing inheritance are influenced by the social characteristics of dying home owners. Because the structure of inheritance reflects the structure of property ownership a generation ago, current differences in the incidence of inheritance will reflect the class and tenure characteristics of the dying population and their relationship to the class and tenure characteristics of beneficiaries. The incidence of housing inheritance is higher among home owners and those in higher social classes because their parents are more likely to have been home owners. I went on to argue that because home ownership has become much more widely spread across the class spectrum over the last 40 years (Hamnett, 1984), the incidence of housing inheritance in 30–40 years' time is likely to be more widely spread than it is today. Thus, I concluded that whilst Saunders' arguments regarding the distribution of house inheritance are not empirically supported today, they may be more so in 30–40 years' time. I argued, however, that although housing inheritance was likely to be more widespread in future than it is today, the children of tenants were unlikely to inherit. Given the growing social residualisation of the council sector I argued that ‘the less skilled, the low income and the unemployed’ were likely to be excluded from inheritance.

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