Place, Poverty, and Safety Net Assistance across State and Local Contexts

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Matters of place, poverty, and safety net assistance are inextricably linked in the U.S. context. Households experiencing poverty and hardship often live in neighborhoods highly segregated by race and class. Such residential segregation corresponds to limited access to educational opportunities, jobs, and sources of social support that are critical to well-being and mobility. As a result, greater scholarly attention has been paid to spatial variation in poverty dynamics and safety net investments. 

This panel extends this policy research literature by assembling a diverse set of scholars and data to explore several related questions about the mechanisms that link poverty, hardship, and mobility intersect within place. Two papers focus on new insights into the spatial organization of poverty and mobility. Michael Schultz uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to trace trends in persistent poverty across urban, suburban, and rural geography. Also using the PSID, Isaiah Wright examines the relationship between childhood exposure to high-poverty neighborhoods and adult economic mobility. Two papers consider spatial variation in safety net responses to need, with an eye towards the conference theme of state policy variation. Robert Manduca, Emily Parker, and Laura Tach examine how place-based sources of social support and investment vary across states and counties. Adding to a growing literature that evaluates the effects of unconditional cash transfers, Christopher Pulliam considers how the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) affects household exposure to food hardship.  

Each paper will provide novel insights. Schultz’s paper considers persistent spells of poverty by geographic location using a relative poverty measure. Similarly, Wright will leverage the unique nature of the PSID to link cumulative exposure to high-poverty places in childhood to early adult earnings. Manduca, Parker, and Tach draw upon a unique dataset to trace place-based programmatic investments over time and place. Pulliam takes advantage of temporal variation in PFD distribution to identify the causal impact of universal cash grants on hardship. Not only will each individual paper contribute significantly to its field of focus, but the dialogue between authors and discussant will identify a host of takeaways relevant to strategies that seek to strengthen investments in low-income families and places.

Policy Area

• Poverty and Income Policy

Chair

• Scott Allard, University of Washington

Discussant

• Alec P. Rhodes, Purdue University

Organizer

• Scott Allard, University of Washington

Individual Presentations

• Place and the Persistence of Poverty: Trends in Urban, Suburban, and Rural Communities - Presenting Author: Michael A Schultz, University of Washington

• Growing Up Poor: Cumulative Neighborhood Exposure and Mobility in the PSID - Presenting Author: Isaiah Charles Alan Wright, University of Washington

• People vs. Place? Spatial Patterns of Federal Person-Based and Place-Based Investments, 1990-2019 - Presenting Author: Laura Tach, Cornell University; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Emily A Parker, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Robert Allen Manduca, University of Michigan

• Universal Cash Transfers and Food Hardship: Evidence from Google Trends Data - Presenting Author: Christopher L. Pulliam, CUNY Graduate Center