Search Results
Briefing
Long-term inequality and mobility
This brief investigates the mobility and income situation of family heads and spouses who have low long-term incomes, where long-term refers to average family income over a 10-year period. The data show that most of those in the poorest one-fifth of the long-term income distribution during the 1996?2006 period spent all or nearly all of the period?s years in the poorest fifth of the single-year income distribution, and those who escaped did not move far. Moreover, this situation has worsened over time, with the long-term poor more ?stuck? at the bottom in the 1996-2006 period than they were ...
Journal Article
Women's labor market involvement and family income mobility when marriages end
The last 30 years have seen a dramatic change in women's social and economic status in the United States, particularly in their labor market activity. When women were less involved and less successful in the labor market, many of them gained access to market income only or primarily through marriage or cohabitation with a working man. As a result, women and children were especially vulnerable to the death of a partner, separation, or divorce. ; In this article, the authors examine three decades of data on the relationship between women's labor market activity and the income mobility of ...
Journal Article
Job creation and destruction in Massachusetts: gross flows among industries
The Massachusetts economy has experienced wide swings in employment in the 1990s, losing over 10 percent of existing jobs in the 1990-91 recession (which began locally in 1989) and not surpassing its pre-recession job peak until early 1998. Within individual sectors of the economy, the losses and gains have been even greater, with many manufacturing industries losing jobs almost nonstop while some non-manufacturing industries have expanded markedly. This article examines these employment swings and attempts to better understand their dynamic underpinnings by disaggregating them into the ...
Journal Article
What past recoveries say about the outlook for New England
New England lagged behind the national recovery in the mid 1970s but did better than average coming out of the 1982 recession. The regions strong recovery after 1982 was the result of increased defense contracts, a high-tech export orientation, and the waning of the 1970s energy price shock. What do those experiences suggest about the pace and character of the present recovery? ; Regression results indicate that the most important determinants of a states recovery are how well its key industries perform nationally, relative wage and energy cost changes, and the fiscal picture. New Englands ...
Journal Article
Black men in the labor market
Journal Article
Issues in economics: are lifetime incomes growing more unequal?: looking at new evidence on family income mobility
Since most people judge their well-being by comparison with others, widening inequality of lifetime incomes may threaten our standing as a "land of opportunity."
Report
Community Education Circles in the Lawrence Public Schools: evaluation design and baseline survey data
This paper describes a plan for evaluating the Community Education Circles (CECs) program that is being implemented in the Lawrence Public Schools as part of an effort to enhance family-school engagement and improve outcomes for both students and parents. The CECs program supports the larger Lawrence Working Families Initiative, which in 2013 was awarded a multiyear grant through the Boston Fed?s Working Cities Challenge. This paper accomplishes several objectives: (1) describe the goals and methods of the CECs program as well as the larger goals of the Lawrence Working Families Initiative; ...
Working Paper
Family characteristics and macroeconomic factors in U. S. intragenerational family income mobility, 1978–2014
Family economic mobility has been a policy concern for decades, with interest heating up further since the 1990s. Using data that tracks individual families? incomes during overlapping 10-year periods from 1978 through 2014, this paper investigates the relationships of factors ? family characteristics and macro influences ? to intragenerational mobility and whether the importance of those factors has changed over time. Family characteristics include both levels of work behavior and family structure and within-period changes in those factors, as well as time-invariant characteristics of the ...
Journal Article
Shifting patterns of regional employment and unemployment: a note
The perception is widespread that the 1990-91 recession and the recovery to date differ in important ways from earlier U.S. business cycles. This note examines some of the evidence regarding these differences, focusing on shifts in the regional pattern of employment and unemployment, especially for New England. ; The recovery from the recent recession has been unusually weak or gradual, especially in terms of employment. Moreover, the recession displayed an industry pattern noticeably different from earlier recessions. Partly as a result, white collar workers suffered more unemployment than ...