Deirdre Bloome
Biographic Data
| ID | 3632315 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Deirdre Bloome |
| GIVEN NAMES | Deirdre |
| FAMILY NAME | Bloome |
| SIGNATURE | BLOOME D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3650-1654 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 562 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
When We Target Federal Workers, Whom Are We Targeting? Three Perspectives on U.S. Federal Workers
The U.S. Department of Government Efficiency has targeted U.S. federal workers through downsizings, funding reductions, and delegitimization efforts. When we target federal workers, whom are we targeting? The author offers a three-dimensional description of civilian federal workers, highlighting commonalities , inequalities , and majority composition . Data come from the Current Population Survey, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Equa…
Absolute and Relative Mobility
Researchers concerned about intergenerational inequalities study absolute and relative mobility (e.g., whether people's adult incomes exceed their parents' incomes in dollars or ranks ). Absolute and relative mobility are connected, by definition. Yet, they are not equivalent. Indeed, they often diverge. To illuminate why, when, and for whom such divergence occurs-and why, when, and for whom convergence is possible-this article provides two frame…
Family Tree Branches and Southern Roots
Individuals’ life outcomes are rooted in their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences, which, in turn, are rooted in the places where they grew up. In the United States, Black (grand)parents were more likely than White (grand)parents to grow up in the South. Intergenerational theories predict that this racial difference in southern family lineages will shape racial differences in many life outcomes. The authors test this hypothesis using marriage…
Open-Population Inference
Studies about intergenerational income mobility are increasingly popular across the social sciences. These studies require individuals’ own incomes and their parents’ incomes to be observed prospectively across decades. Because this longitudinal observation is less difficult among third-and-higher generation persons than among 1.5- and second-generation persons (particularly undocumented 1.5-generation immigrants), studies of intergenerational in…
Childhood Family Instability and Young-Adult Union Experiences
Today's young adults have diverse union experiences; some enter enduring marital or cohabiting unions at young ages, but many delay or dissolve their unions or remain single. Childhood family instability—defined as parents' transitions into or out of romantic coresidential unions—offers one explanation for why some people are more likely than others to enter and exit unions. We evaluate whether this family instability hypothesis—a union-specific …
Is the Effect Larger in Group A or B? It Depends
Demographers and other social scientists often study effect heterogeneity (defined here as differences in outcome–predictor associations across groups defined by the values of a third variable) to understand how inequalities evolve between groups or how groups differentially benefit from treatments. Yet answering the question “Is the effect larger in group A or group B?” is surprisingly difficult. In fact, the answer sometimes reverses across sca…
Covariance Regression Models for Studying Treatment Effect Heterogeneity Across One or More Outcomes
Causal analyses typically focus on average treatment effects. Yet for substantive research on topics like inequality, interest extends to treatments’ distributional consequences. When individuals differ in their responses to treatment, three types of inequality may result. Treatment may shape inequalities between subgroups defined by pretreatment covariates, it may induce more inequality in one subgroup than another, or it may polarize people acr…
Marriage and Union Formation in the United States
Family formation in the United States has changed dramatically: marriage has become less common, nonmarital cohabitation has become more common, and racial and economic inequalities in these experiences have increased. We provide insights into recent U.S. trends by presenting cohort estimates for people born between 1970 and 1997, who began forming unions between 1985 and 2015. Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics data, we find that typical ages …
Lifetime inequality
Economic Self-Reliance and Gender Inequality between U.S. Men and Women, 1970–2010
Women have become increasingly economically self-reliant, depending more on paid employment for their positions in the income distribution than in the past. We know little about what happened to men, however, because most prior research restricts changes in self-reliance to be "zero-sum," with women's changes necessitating opposite and proportionate changes among men. This article introduces a measure that allows asymmetric changes and also incor…
Educational Inequality, Educational Expansion, and Intergenerational Income Persistence in the United States
The children of high-income parents often become high-income adults, while their low-income peers often become low-income adults. Education plays a central role in this intergenerational income persistence. Because education-based inequalities grew in recent decades, many scholars predicted that intergenerational income persistence would increase. However, previous research suggests that it remained stable across recent cohorts. We address this p…
Childhood Family Structure and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States
The declining prevalence of two-parent families helped increase income inequality over recent decades. Does family structure also condition how economic (dis)advantages pass from parents to children? If so, shifts in the organization of family life may contribute to enduring inequality between groups defined by childhood family structure. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, I combine parametric and nonparametric methods to reveal ho…
Tenancy, Marriage, and the Boll Weevil Infestation, 1892–1930
In the early twentieth century, the cotton-growing regions of the U.S. South were dominated by families of tenant farmers. Tenant farming created opportunities and incentives for prospective tenants to marry at young ages. These opportunities and incentives especially affected African Americans, who had few alternatives to working as tenants. Using complete-count Census of Population data from 1900–1930 and Census of Agriculture data from 1889–19…
Trends in Income Insecurity Among U.S. Children, 1984–2010
Has income insecurity increased among U.S. children with the emergence of an employment-based safety net and the polarization of labor markets and family structure? We study the trend in insecurity from 1984-2010 by analyzing fluctuations in children's monthly family incomes in the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Going beyond earlier research on income volatility, we examine income insecurity more directly by analyzing income gains an…
Income Inequality and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States
Is there a relationship between family income inequality and income mobility across generations in the United States? As family income inequality rose in the United States, parental resources available for improving children's health, education, and care diverged. The amount and rate of divergence also varied across US states. Researchers and policy analysts have expressed concern that relatively high inequality might be accompanied by relatively…
Tenancy and African American Marriage in the Postbellum South
The pervasiveness of tenancy in the postbellum South had countervailing effects on marriage between African Americans. Tenancy placed severe constraints on African American women’s ability to find independent agricultural work. Freedwomen confronted not only planters’ reluctance to contract directly with women but also whites’ refusal to sell land to African Americans. Marriage consequently became one of African American women’s few viable routes…
Racial Inequality Trends and the Intergenerational Persistence of Income and Family Structure
Racial disparity in family incomes remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years in the United States despite major legal and social reforms. Previous scholarship presents two primary explanations for persistent inequality through a period of progressive change. One highlights continuity: because socioeconomic status is transmitted from parents to children, disparities created through histories of discrimination and opportunity denial may dis…
Economic Insecurity and Social Stratification
Economic insecurity describes the risk of economic loss faced by workers and households as they encounter the unpredictable events of social life. Our review suggests a four-part framework for studying the distribution and trends in these economic risks. First, a focus on households rather than workers captures the microlevel risk pooling that can smooth income flows and stabilize economic well-being. Second, insecurity is related to income volat…
Variance Function Regressions for Studying Inequality
Regression-based studies of inequality model only between-group differences, yet often these differences are far exceeded by residual inequality. Residual inequality is usually attributed to measurement error or the influence of unobserved characteristics. We present a model, called variance function regression, that includes covariates for both the mean and variance of a dependent variable. In this model, the residual variance is treated as a ta…
Inequality among American Families with Children, 1975 to 2005
From 1975 to 2005, the variance in incomes of American families with children increased by two-thirds. In attempting to explain this trend, labor market studies emphasize the rising pay of college graduates, while demographers typically highlight the implications of family structural changes across time. In this article, we join these lines of research by conceiving of income inequality as the joint product of the distribution of earnings in the …
Economic Insecurity and Social Stratification
Economic insecurity describes the risk of economic loss faced by workers and households as they encounter the unpredictable events of social life. Our review suggests a four-part framework for studying the distribution and trends in these economic risks. First, a focus on households rather than workers captures the microlevel risk pooling that can smooth income flows and stabilize economic well-being. Second, insecurity is related to income volat…
Inequality among American Families with Children, 1975 to 2005
From 1975 to 2005, the variance in incomes of American families with children increased by two-thirds. In attempting to explain this trend, labor market studies emphasize the rising pay of college graduates, while demographers typically highlight the implications of family structural changes across time. In this article, we join these lines of research by conceiving of income inequality as the joint product of the distribution of earnings in the …
Racial Inequality Trends and the Intergenerational Persistence of Income and Family Structure
Racial disparity in family incomes remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years in the United States despite major legal and social reforms. Previous scholarship presents two primary explanations for persistent inequality through a period of progressive change. One highlights continuity: because socioeconomic status is transmitted from parents to children, disparities created through histories of discrimination and opportunity denial may dis…
Educational Inequality, Educational Expansion, and Intergenerational Income Persistence in the United States
The children of high-income parents often become high-income adults, while their low-income peers often become low-income adults. Education plays a central role in this intergenerational income persistence. Because education-based inequalities grew in recent decades, many scholars predicted that intergenerational income persistence would increase. However, previous research suggests that it remained stable across recent cohorts. We address this p…
Variance Function Regressions for Studying Inequality
Regression-based studies of inequality model only between-group differences, yet often these differences are far exceeded by residual inequality. Residual inequality is usually attributed to measurement error or the influence of unobserved characteristics. We present a model, called variance function regression, that includes covariates for both the mean and variance of a dependent variable. In this model, the residual variance is treated as a ta…
Childhood Family Structure and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States
The declining prevalence of two-parent families helped increase income inequality over recent decades. Does family structure also condition how economic (dis)advantages pass from parents to children? If so, shifts in the organization of family life may contribute to enduring inequality between groups defined by childhood family structure. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, I combine parametric and nonparametric methods to reveal ho…
Marriage and Union Formation in the United States
Family formation in the United States has changed dramatically: marriage has become less common, nonmarital cohabitation has become more common, and racial and economic inequalities in these experiences have increased. We provide insights into recent U.S. trends by presenting cohort estimates for people born between 1970 and 1997, who began forming unions between 1985 and 2015. Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics data, we find that typical ages …
Trends in Income Insecurity Among U.S. Children, 1984–2010
Has income insecurity increased among U.S. children with the emergence of an employment-based safety net and the polarization of labor markets and family structure? We study the trend in insecurity from 1984-2010 by analyzing fluctuations in children's monthly family incomes in the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Going beyond earlier research on income volatility, we examine income insecurity more directly by analyzing income gains an…
Tenancy and African American Marriage in the Postbellum South
The pervasiveness of tenancy in the postbellum South had countervailing effects on marriage between African Americans. Tenancy placed severe constraints on African American women’s ability to find independent agricultural work. Freedwomen confronted not only planters’ reluctance to contract directly with women but also whites’ refusal to sell land to African Americans. Marriage consequently became one of African American women’s few viable routes…
Economic Self-Reliance and Gender Inequality between U.S. Men and Women, 1970–2010
Women have become increasingly economically self-reliant, depending more on paid employment for their positions in the income distribution than in the past. We know little about what happened to men, however, because most prior research restricts changes in self-reliance to be "zero-sum," with women's changes necessitating opposite and proportionate changes among men. This article introduces a measure that allows asymmetric changes and also incor…
Lifetime inequality
Tenancy, Marriage, and the Boll Weevil Infestation, 1892–1930
In the early twentieth century, the cotton-growing regions of the U.S. South were dominated by families of tenant farmers. Tenant farming created opportunities and incentives for prospective tenants to marry at young ages. These opportunities and incentives especially affected African Americans, who had few alternatives to working as tenants. Using complete-count Census of Population data from 1900–1930 and Census of Agriculture data from 1889–19…
Is the Effect Larger in Group A or B? It Depends
Demographers and other social scientists often study effect heterogeneity (defined here as differences in outcome–predictor associations across groups defined by the values of a third variable) to understand how inequalities evolve between groups or how groups differentially benefit from treatments. Yet answering the question “Is the effect larger in group A or group B?” is surprisingly difficult. In fact, the answer sometimes reverses across sca…
Covariance Regression Models for Studying Treatment Effect Heterogeneity Across One or More Outcomes
Causal analyses typically focus on average treatment effects. Yet for substantive research on topics like inequality, interest extends to treatments’ distributional consequences. When individuals differ in their responses to treatment, three types of inequality may result. Treatment may shape inequalities between subgroups defined by pretreatment covariates, it may induce more inequality in one subgroup than another, or it may polarize people acr…
Childhood Family Instability and Young-Adult Union Experiences
Today's young adults have diverse union experiences; some enter enduring marital or cohabiting unions at young ages, but many delay or dissolve their unions or remain single. Childhood family instability—defined as parents' transitions into or out of romantic coresidential unions—offers one explanation for why some people are more likely than others to enter and exit unions. We evaluate whether this family instability hypothesis—a union-specific …
Inequality among American Families with Children, 1975 to 2005
From 1975 to 2005, the variance in incomes of American families with children increased by two-thirds. In attempting to explain this trend, labor market studies emphasize the rising pay of college graduates, while demographers typically highlight the implications of family structural changes across time. In this article, we join these lines of research by conceiving of income inequality as the joint product of the distribution of earnings in the …
Variance Function Regressions for Studying Inequality
Regression-based studies of inequality model only between-group differences, yet often these differences are far exceeded by residual inequality. Residual inequality is usually attributed to measurement error or the influence of unobserved characteristics. We present a model, called variance function regression, that includes covariates for both the mean and variance of a dependent variable. In this model, the residual variance is treated as a ta…
Economic Insecurity and Social Stratification
Economic insecurity describes the risk of economic loss faced by workers and households as they encounter the unpredictable events of social life. Our review suggests a four-part framework for studying the distribution and trends in these economic risks. First, a focus on households rather than workers captures the microlevel risk pooling that can smooth income flows and stabilize economic well-being. Second, insecurity is related to income volat…
Racial Inequality Trends and the Intergenerational Persistence of Income and Family Structure
Racial disparity in family incomes remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years in the United States despite major legal and social reforms. Previous scholarship presents two primary explanations for persistent inequality through a period of progressive change. One highlights continuity: because socioeconomic status is transmitted from parents to children, disparities created through histories of discrimination and opportunity denial may dis…
Income Inequality and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States
Is there a relationship between family income inequality and income mobility across generations in the United States? As family income inequality rose in the United States, parental resources available for improving children's health, education, and care diverged. The amount and rate of divergence also varied across US states. Researchers and policy analysts have expressed concern that relatively high inequality might be accompanied by relatively…
Tenancy and African American Marriage in the Postbellum South
The pervasiveness of tenancy in the postbellum South had countervailing effects on marriage between African Americans. Tenancy placed severe constraints on African American women’s ability to find independent agricultural work. Freedwomen confronted not only planters’ reluctance to contract directly with women but also whites’ refusal to sell land to African Americans. Marriage consequently became one of African American women’s few viable routes…
Trends in Income Insecurity Among U.S. Children, 1984–2010
Has income insecurity increased among U.S. children with the emergence of an employment-based safety net and the polarization of labor markets and family structure? We study the trend in insecurity from 1984-2010 by analyzing fluctuations in children's monthly family incomes in the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Going beyond earlier research on income volatility, we examine income insecurity more directly by analyzing income gains an…
Childhood Family Structure and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States
The declining prevalence of two-parent families helped increase income inequality over recent decades. Does family structure also condition how economic (dis)advantages pass from parents to children? If so, shifts in the organization of family life may contribute to enduring inequality between groups defined by childhood family structure. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, I combine parametric and nonparametric methods to reveal ho…
Tenancy, Marriage, and the Boll Weevil Infestation, 1892–1930
In the early twentieth century, the cotton-growing regions of the U.S. South were dominated by families of tenant farmers. Tenant farming created opportunities and incentives for prospective tenants to marry at young ages. These opportunities and incentives especially affected African Americans, who had few alternatives to working as tenants. Using complete-count Census of Population data from 1900–1930 and Census of Agriculture data from 1889–19…
Educational Inequality, Educational Expansion, and Intergenerational Income Persistence in the United States
The children of high-income parents often become high-income adults, while their low-income peers often become low-income adults. Education plays a central role in this intergenerational income persistence. Because education-based inequalities grew in recent decades, many scholars predicted that intergenerational income persistence would increase. However, previous research suggests that it remained stable across recent cohorts. We address this p…
Lifetime inequality
Economic Self-Reliance and Gender Inequality between U.S. Men and Women, 1970–2010
Women have become increasingly economically self-reliant, depending more on paid employment for their positions in the income distribution than in the past. We know little about what happened to men, however, because most prior research restricts changes in self-reliance to be "zero-sum," with women's changes necessitating opposite and proportionate changes among men. This article introduces a measure that allows asymmetric changes and also incor…
Marriage and Union Formation in the United States
Family formation in the United States has changed dramatically: marriage has become less common, nonmarital cohabitation has become more common, and racial and economic inequalities in these experiences have increased. We provide insights into recent U.S. trends by presenting cohort estimates for people born between 1970 and 1997, who began forming unions between 1985 and 2015. Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics data, we find that typical ages …
Covariance Regression Models for Studying Treatment Effect Heterogeneity Across One or More Outcomes
Causal analyses typically focus on average treatment effects. Yet for substantive research on topics like inequality, interest extends to treatments’ distributional consequences. When individuals differ in their responses to treatment, three types of inequality may result. Treatment may shape inequalities between subgroups defined by pretreatment covariates, it may induce more inequality in one subgroup than another, or it may polarize people acr…
Is the Effect Larger in Group A or B? It Depends
Demographers and other social scientists often study effect heterogeneity (defined here as differences in outcome–predictor associations across groups defined by the values of a third variable) to understand how inequalities evolve between groups or how groups differentially benefit from treatments. Yet answering the question “Is the effect larger in group A or group B?” is surprisingly difficult. In fact, the answer sometimes reverses across sca…
Open-Population Inference
Studies about intergenerational income mobility are increasingly popular across the social sciences. These studies require individuals’ own incomes and their parents’ incomes to be observed prospectively across decades. Because this longitudinal observation is less difficult among third-and-higher generation persons than among 1.5- and second-generation persons (particularly undocumented 1.5-generation immigrants), studies of intergenerational in…
Childhood Family Instability and Young-Adult Union Experiences
Today's young adults have diverse union experiences; some enter enduring marital or cohabiting unions at young ages, but many delay or dissolve their unions or remain single. Childhood family instability—defined as parents' transitions into or out of romantic coresidential unions—offers one explanation for why some people are more likely than others to enter and exit unions. We evaluate whether this family instability hypothesis—a union-specific …
Family Tree Branches and Southern Roots
Individuals’ life outcomes are rooted in their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences, which, in turn, are rooted in the places where they grew up. In the United States, Black (grand)parents were more likely than White (grand)parents to grow up in the South. Intergenerational theories predict that this racial difference in southern family lineages will shape racial differences in many life outcomes. The authors test this hypothesis using marriage…
When We Target Federal Workers, Whom Are We Targeting? Three Perspectives on U.S. Federal Workers
The U.S. Department of Government Efficiency has targeted U.S. federal workers through downsizings, funding reductions, and delegitimization efforts. When we target federal workers, whom are we targeting? The author offers a three-dimensional description of civilian federal workers, highlighting commonalities , inequalities , and majority composition . Data come from the Current Population Survey, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Equa…
Absolute and Relative Mobility
Researchers concerned about intergenerational inequalities study absolute and relative mobility (e.g., whether people's adult incomes exceed their parents' incomes in dollars or ranks ). Absolute and relative mobility are connected, by definition. Yet, they are not equivalent. Indeed, they often diverge. To illuminate why, when, and for whom such divergence occurs-and why, when, and for whom convergence is possible-this article provides two frame…
Economics (17 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Demographic economics (14 works) · Inequality (13 works) · Demography (12 works) · Population (12 works) · Demography (10 works) · Economic growth (9 works) · Economic inequality (8 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (8 works)