Well-Being and Stability among Low-income Families: A 10-Year Review of Research
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REVIEW
Well‑Being and Stability among Low‑income Families: A 10‑Year Review of Research Yoshie Sano1 · Sheila Mammen2 · Myah Houghten3 Accepted: 16 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Scholarship on families in poverty, in the last decade, documented various struggles and challenges faced by low-income families and expanded our understanding of their complicated life circumstances embedded within the contexts of community, culture, and policies. The research articles published in the Journal of Family and Economic Issues during this time, that highlighted poverty, focused primarily on three topic areas: economic security, family life issues, and food security. Overall, findings conclude that family well-being and stability cannot be promoted without the consideration of environmental factors. They depend on the interaction among individual (e.g., increased human capital), family (e.g., positive co-parental relationship), community (e.g., affordable childcare), and policy changes (e.g., realistic welfare-to-work programs). Collectively, the articles have provided a road map for future research directions. Keywords Economic security · Family issues · Family well-being · Family stability · Food security · Poverty
Introduction Family well-being, essential to the smooth functioning of communities and societies, is hindered when there is high incidence of poverty. Poverty rate in the US hovered around 14% prior to the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PROWRA) of This is one of several papers published together in Journal of Family and Economic Issues on the “Special Issue on Virtual Decade in Review”. * Yoshie Sano [email protected] Sheila Mammen [email protected] Myah Houghten [email protected] 1
Department of Human Development, Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Avenue, Vancouver, WA 98686, USA
2
Department of Resource Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 309 Stockbridge Hall, Amherst, MA 01003, USA
3
Child and Family Research Unit, Washington State University Extension, 412 E. Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99202, USA
1996 (U.S. Census 2019a). Following welfare reform, the poverty rate started to decline (to a low of 11.3% in 2000) (U.S. Census 2019a), although scholars have questioned if PROWRA is the cause of this decline. Uncertainties in the economy, including the 2008 Great Recession, caused the poverty rate to climb again and remain at around 15% until 2014. With the fading effects of the recession, the US poverty rate was at 11.8% in early 2020, right before the current Coronavirus pandemic. One group that is most vulnerable to poverty, however, are female-headed households, who consistently comprise 50% of all households living in poverty. Other vulnerable groups include non-Whites [poverty rate in 2018, Blacks: 22%; Hispanics: 19%; Native Americans: 24%] (Kaiser Family Foundation 2020); rural communities [poverty rate in 2018, non-metro: 16%; metro: 13%] (Economic Research Service 2020)
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