Rachel E. Dwyer

Care work supports the health, well-being, and development of human beings across the life course. Increasingly in the United States and in many societies, formal organizations deliver care alongside the care work done within families and communities. Even market-based care organizations depend on major public investments, however. The care sector is therefore integral to population policy and science. Investment in the care sector may be particularly widespread geographically and occur during economic recession and expansion. Yet there has been relatively little attention to the distribution and growth of care employment across the full diversity of places where the U.S. population lives. Where is care sector employment? In this article, we used unique detailed employment data for industries across U.S. counties and compared the distribution of care sector employment to the distribution of other sectors often targeted by economic policy. Our measure of the care sector included significant geographic detail on educational and health services, large industries in care provision. We studied the beginning of the twenty-first century through the slow growth years before, during and after the Great Recession as important for understanding the care sector during a period of fiscal austerity in the public sector and sluggish employment growth particularly in manufacturing. We found that the care sector grew more and in a significantly less concentrated pattern than other sectors during the slow growth and recession years from 2001–2014. Our results should guide researchers and policymakers in developing policies that support population health and well-being.

Low-income households in the United States draw on public and private resources to manage economic risk. Cross-national scholars describe a “credit–welfare state tradeoff” where credit markets become particularly important when state benefits are less supportive. The United States is frequently highlighted in this regard, with its often-inadequate market-first safety net. Both credit markets and the safety net are, however, highly unequal and segmented across U.S. states. We provide new empirical insights on the credit–welfare state nexus by leveraging a large national sample of credit record data that allows us to distinguish between credit instruments. We link these data to a comprehensive dataset on state safety nets with comparable measures of program supportiveness. We estimate two-way fixed-effects models that exploit temporal variation within states in safety net supportiveness. We find that living in states with more supportive safety nets is associated with a lower probability of high-cost alternative payday, installment, and personal finance loan use, and a higher probability of mainstream credit card access, particularly among low-income households. In the context of the relative inadequacy of the U.S. safety net, state safety net supportiveness matters less for whether people borrow than for what credit instruments they use. Our findings suggest that efforts to restrict the U.S. safety net are likely to increase reliance on high-cost loans among low-income households, furthering the unequal burden of interest and fees levied on these households.

Job polarization was first identified in the US in the 1990s, when employment growth concentrated in the highest and lowest wages jobs with much less growth in middle-wage jobs. Research since then has identified continuing polarizing pressures in the US and Europe, but also evidence of job upgrading in some periods even in the US. Prior research on job polarization often focuses on the relationship between individual wage inequality and inequality between jobs defined as occupations. I argue for the value of a focus on the structure of job inequality as distinct from individual wage inequality and, furthermore, argue for the inclusion of sectoral divisions in a jobs-based approach. With that conceptual underpinning, I analyse CPS data and build on prior work to study the first two decades of the 2000s, up to the first pandemic year of 2020. I disaggregate job growth by sector, employment contract and socio-demographic groups. I find that the pattern of job polarization shifted in the 2000s where economic recessions became increasingly crucial in shaping the evolution of job growth. I also find striking race/ethnic disparities in job growth that reinforce both the privileged position of white workers in the US labour market, but also challenges for white workers in middle-wage jobs. Black and Hispanic workers also face particularly significant obstacles in reaching the highest-wage jobs. I close with policy recommendations for supporting equitable job growth.

In the United States, women have earned more bachelor’s degrees than men since the mid-1980s. We examine the historical continuities in this trend and its sources, as well as changes since 2000 in gender gaps in advanced credentials, fields of study, types of institutions attended, and financing for higher education. The gender gap in bachelor’s degrees has remained stable at a high level over this period and a female advantage in advanced degrees emerged, especially in professional degrees. The deepening gender divide in credentials coincided with rising shares of women attending for-profit institutions and an emerging gender divide in student indebtedness. Thus, women disproportionately carry the promise and bear the costs of educational expansion, with far reaching implications for the future.

The debt collection industry in the United States has grown in tandem with rising indebtedness. Prior research on debt and mental health mainly treats debt as a resource and liability rather than a power relationship between creditors and debtors. We study the mental health consequences of debt collection pressure using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1997 Cohort (N = 7,236). Drawing on stress theory and health power resources theory, we posit collection pressure as a relational stressor that undermines well-being through negative interactions with debt collectors, financial strain, role strain, and stigma. We find that more than one out of every three young adults in this cohort faced debt collection pressure by around age 40, with higher rates among low-income and Black young adults. Individual fixed-effects and lagged dependent variable regression models indicate that debt collection pressure is associated with increased psychological distress, with more severe consequences among low-income young adults.

US consumers may turn to the private market for credit when income and government benefits fall short. The most vulnerable consumers have access only to the highest-cost loans. Prior research on trade-offs of credit with government welfare support cannot distinguish between distinct forms of unsecured credit due to data limitations. Here we provide insight on credit–welfare state trade-offs vis-à-vis unemployment insurance generosity by leveraging a large sample of credit data that allow us to separate credit cards, personal loans and alternative financial services loans and to analyse heterogeneity in credit use by household income. We find that more generous state unemployment insurance benefits were associated with a lower probability of high-cost credit use during the first seven quarters of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This inverse association was concentrated among consumers living in low-income households. Our results support theories that public benefits are inversely associated with the use of costly credit.

Emerging adults in the U.S. face significant economic uncertainty during the early life course. Economic uncertainties grew in the 2000s, especially for the Millennial cohort. Access to credit can be a resource to manage the instability that characterizes emerging adulthood. However, debt can also become a burden, making credit like a “double-edged sword.” We study inequality in debt holding for five debt types that provide distinct resources and burdens, including mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit cards, and other debts to businesses. We analyze the extent to which the Millennial cohort accumulated unequal debts by the end of emerging adulthood using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort. We find strikingly unequal debt holding by education, race/ethnicity, and education-by-race/ethnicity for Millennial emerging adults. We conclude that policies and programs that support emerging adult financial wellbeing will be crucial for healthy development and reduced inequalities during this life course stage.

Social exclusion of those with criminal justice experience increasingly includes a financial component, but the structure of disadvantage in credit and debt remains unclear. We develop a model of financial disadvantage in debt holding during the transition to adulthood among justice‐involved groups. We study cumulative criminal justice contact and debt holding by age 30 using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). The NLSY97 cohort transitioned to adulthood during an era of historically high criminal justice contact, with many experiencing arrests, convictions, and incarceration. We develop a distinct measurement approach to cumulative criminal justice contact by age 30 that captures variation between young adults in the severity of justice encounters in the early life course. We conceptualize financial disadvantage as a lower likelihood of holding debt that facilitates property and attainment investments and a higher likelihood of holding higher cost debts used for consumption or emergencies. We find that those with the most punitive criminal justice contact evidence the most disadvantageous form of debt holding, potentially exacerbating social exclusion. We consider the implications of the accumulation of financial disadvantage for our understanding of criminal justice contact as a life‐course process.

The 2008 housing crisis and the changes in lending practices that led up to it shook the status of home loans as secure debt in the USA. The crisis hit during a time when many young adults had recently bought their first home, making it a particularly consequential moment in their homeownership career. We investigate the effects of the housing crisis on the mental health of young homeowners using longitudinal data. We model levels of anxiety among young homeowners carrying mortgage debt before and after the recession as an early indicator of how the crisis affected the experience of home loans. The positive effects of being a mortgaged homeowner before the recession declined significantly after the housing crisis. We discuss whether this shift may portend a longer-term shift in American beliefs in the value of investing in housing, with significant implications for financial well-being and wealth stratification.