Megan Doherty Bea
Biographic Data
| ID | 248532 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Megan Doherty Bea |
| GIVEN NAMES | Megan Doherty |
| FAMILY NAME | Bea |
| SIGNATURE | BEA M D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1533-3871 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 116 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
It’s a Last Resort. But It’s a First Resort”: A Relational Perspective of Payday Loan Use
In the United States, there is widespread use of payday loans, a high-cost credit product, among lower-income populations. Existing literature suggests that structural constraints like limited banking access or behavioral factors like lack of financial knowledge explain why so many individuals use these costly services. Yet neither explanation sufficiently captures the complexity of decision-making around using payday loans. Drawing on 40 in-dept…
A Life Course Perspective of Community (Non)Investment: Historical Financial Service Trajectories and Community Outcomes
Legal actuation: How Ex Ante Legal Behavior Drives Inequality
Individuals routinely engage in instrumental transactional legal behavior, from generating tax returns to signing leases to negotiating employment terms. While some individuals undertake these activities equipped with the skills, knowledge, and capacity to behave strategically, others do not. In this article, we introduce the concept of legal actuation to describe this legal behavior and theorize its role as a source of inequality under the law. …
Who Pays for Flooding? Local Flood Disasters and Racial Inequality in the Mortgage Market
Banking on the Neighborhood? Inequalities in Older Adults’ Access to Local Banking and Neighborhood Perceptions
Local banks may represent neighborhood investment and the broader economic vitality of a community, as well as the ability of communities to meet older adults' everyday needs in ways that enhance older residents' feelings of safety. Increasing access to local financial institutions may help attenuate neighborhood-based contributors to inequalities in health and well-being among the older adult population
Public Cash Assistance and Spatial Predation: How State Cash-Transfer Environments Shape Payday Lender Geography
In the past 3 decades, there has been a general contraction of social support while the high-cost lending industry has expanded. We examine how state-level variation in the generosity of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance affects the distribution of high-cost payday lenders across local communities between 2001 and 2017. When TANF support is relatively more generous, the density of payday lending storefronts increases …
Payday lenders and premature mortality
Relationships between debt and poor health are worrisome as access to expensive credit expands and population health worsens along certain metrics. We focus on payday lenders as one type of expensive credit and investigate the spatial relationships between lender storefronts and premature mortality rates. We combine causes of death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and payday lender locations at the county-level in th…
Marginalized legal categories: Social inequality, family structure, and the laws of intestacy
Social classifications are increasingly interrelated, far-reaching, and consequential for socioeconomic outcomes. We use the concept of marginalized legal categories to describe how the law disadvantages individuals or groups by transforming inherently ordered social classifications into consequential legal categories, employing intestacy laws as an illustration. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that more than 21% of American famili…
His and Her Earnings Following Parenthood in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom
This article advances a couple-level framework to examine how parenthood shapes within-family gender inequality by education in three countries that vary in their normative and policy context: the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. We trace mothers' share of couple earnings and variation by her education in the 10-year window around first birth, using long-running harmonized panel surveys from the 1990s and 2000s ( N = 4,117 couples …
Racial and Ethnic Differences in Consumers’ Economic Expectations
Consumers’ expectations about the future of their own finances and the macroeconomy are used to forecast consumption, but forecasts do not typically account for differences by race and ethnicity. In this report, the author asks (1) whether there is consistent racial and ethnic variation in consumers’ economic expectations, (2) if differences can be explained by economic experiences, and (3) how the scope of expectations matters. The author uses t…
Leaving the Financial Nest: Connecting Young Adults' Financial Independence to Financial Security
ObjectiveThis study examines variation in young adults' transitions to financial independence and the relationship between these transitions and financial security.BackgroundIndividuals rely on their families for substantial financial support well into early adulthood, even as young adults perceive independence as a key marker of adulthood. Given known variation in transitions to adulthood and unequal exposure to financial precariousness across s…
Networking in the Shadow of the Law: Informal Access to Legal Expertise through Personal Network Ties
Civil legal problems are common in everyday life, but the costs of obtaining legal representation create barriers to legal action and contribute to disparities in access to justice. Some individuals, however, may have informal access to legal assistance through personal network ties with lawyers, enhancing their responses to justiciable problems. In this study, we draw from theories of social capital and network formation to examine the distribut…
His and Her Earnings Following Parenthood in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom
This article advances a couple-level framework to examine how parenthood shapes within-family gender inequality by education in three countries that vary in their normative and policy context: the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. We trace mothers' share of couple earnings and variation by her education in the 10-year window around first birth, using long-running harmonized panel surveys from the 1990s and 2000s ( N = 4,117 couples …
Leaving the Financial Nest: Connecting Young Adults' Financial Independence to Financial Security
ObjectiveThis study examines variation in young adults' transitions to financial independence and the relationship between these transitions and financial security.BackgroundIndividuals rely on their families for substantial financial support well into early adulthood, even as young adults perceive independence as a key marker of adulthood. Given known variation in transitions to adulthood and unequal exposure to financial precariousness across s…
Marginalized legal categories: Social inequality, family structure, and the laws of intestacy
Social classifications are increasingly interrelated, far-reaching, and consequential for socioeconomic outcomes. We use the concept of marginalized legal categories to describe how the law disadvantages individuals or groups by transforming inherently ordered social classifications into consequential legal categories, employing intestacy laws as an illustration. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that more than 21% of American famili…
Networking in the Shadow of the Law: Informal Access to Legal Expertise through Personal Network Ties
Civil legal problems are common in everyday life, but the costs of obtaining legal representation create barriers to legal action and contribute to disparities in access to justice. Some individuals, however, may have informal access to legal assistance through personal network ties with lawyers, enhancing their responses to justiciable problems. In this study, we draw from theories of social capital and network formation to examine the distribut…
Public Cash Assistance and Spatial Predation: How State Cash-Transfer Environments Shape Payday Lender Geography
In the past 3 decades, there has been a general contraction of social support while the high-cost lending industry has expanded. We examine how state-level variation in the generosity of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance affects the distribution of high-cost payday lenders across local communities between 2001 and 2017. When TANF support is relatively more generous, the density of payday lending storefronts increases …
Legal actuation: How Ex Ante Legal Behavior Drives Inequality
Individuals routinely engage in instrumental transactional legal behavior, from generating tax returns to signing leases to negotiating employment terms. While some individuals undertake these activities equipped with the skills, knowledge, and capacity to behave strategically, others do not. In this article, we introduce the concept of legal actuation to describe this legal behavior and theorize its role as a source of inequality under the law. …
Networking in the Shadow of the Law: Informal Access to Legal Expertise through Personal Network Ties
Civil legal problems are common in everyday life, but the costs of obtaining legal representation create barriers to legal action and contribute to disparities in access to justice. Some individuals, however, may have informal access to legal assistance through personal network ties with lawyers, enhancing their responses to justiciable problems. In this study, we draw from theories of social capital and network formation to examine the distribut…
Racial and Ethnic Differences in Consumers’ Economic Expectations
Consumers’ expectations about the future of their own finances and the macroeconomy are used to forecast consumption, but forecasts do not typically account for differences by race and ethnicity. In this report, the author asks (1) whether there is consistent racial and ethnic variation in consumers’ economic expectations, (2) if differences can be explained by economic experiences, and (3) how the scope of expectations matters. The author uses t…
Leaving the Financial Nest: Connecting Young Adults' Financial Independence to Financial Security
ObjectiveThis study examines variation in young adults' transitions to financial independence and the relationship between these transitions and financial security.BackgroundIndividuals rely on their families for substantial financial support well into early adulthood, even as young adults perceive independence as a key marker of adulthood. Given known variation in transitions to adulthood and unequal exposure to financial precariousness across s…
His and Her Earnings Following Parenthood in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom
This article advances a couple-level framework to examine how parenthood shapes within-family gender inequality by education in three countries that vary in their normative and policy context: the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. We trace mothers' share of couple earnings and variation by her education in the 10-year window around first birth, using long-running harmonized panel surveys from the 1990s and 2000s ( N = 4,117 couples …
Marginalized legal categories: Social inequality, family structure, and the laws of intestacy
Social classifications are increasingly interrelated, far-reaching, and consequential for socioeconomic outcomes. We use the concept of marginalized legal categories to describe how the law disadvantages individuals or groups by transforming inherently ordered social classifications into consequential legal categories, employing intestacy laws as an illustration. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that more than 21% of American famili…
Payday lenders and premature mortality
Relationships between debt and poor health are worrisome as access to expensive credit expands and population health worsens along certain metrics. We focus on payday lenders as one type of expensive credit and investigate the spatial relationships between lender storefronts and premature mortality rates. We combine causes of death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and payday lender locations at the county-level in th…
Banking on the Neighborhood? Inequalities in Older Adults’ Access to Local Banking and Neighborhood Perceptions
Local banks may represent neighborhood investment and the broader economic vitality of a community, as well as the ability of communities to meet older adults' everyday needs in ways that enhance older residents' feelings of safety. Increasing access to local financial institutions may help attenuate neighborhood-based contributors to inequalities in health and well-being among the older adult population
Public Cash Assistance and Spatial Predation: How State Cash-Transfer Environments Shape Payday Lender Geography
In the past 3 decades, there has been a general contraction of social support while the high-cost lending industry has expanded. We examine how state-level variation in the generosity of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance affects the distribution of high-cost payday lenders across local communities between 2001 and 2017. When TANF support is relatively more generous, the density of payday lending storefronts increases …
A Life Course Perspective of Community (Non)Investment: Historical Financial Service Trajectories and Community Outcomes
Legal actuation: How Ex Ante Legal Behavior Drives Inequality
Individuals routinely engage in instrumental transactional legal behavior, from generating tax returns to signing leases to negotiating employment terms. While some individuals undertake these activities equipped with the skills, knowledge, and capacity to behave strategically, others do not. In this article, we introduce the concept of legal actuation to describe this legal behavior and theorize its role as a source of inequality under the law. …
Who Pays for Flooding? Local Flood Disasters and Racial Inequality in the Mortgage Market
It’s a Last Resort. But It’s a First Resort”: A Relational Perspective of Payday Loan Use
In the United States, there is widespread use of payday loans, a high-cost credit product, among lower-income populations. Existing literature suggests that structural constraints like limited banking access or behavioral factors like lack of financial knowledge explain why so many individuals use these costly services. Yet neither explanation sufficiently captures the complexity of decision-making around using payday loans. Drawing on 40 in-dept…
Economics (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Business (5 works) · Demographic economics (5 works) · Finance (5 works) · Inequality (5 works) · Demography (4 works) · Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis (4 works)