H Luke Shaefer
Biographic Data
| ID | 40571 |
|---|---|
| NAME | H Luke Shaefer |
| GIVEN NAMES | H Luke |
| FAMILY NAME | Shaefer |
| SIGNATURE | SHAEFER H L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 278 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The Parallel Declines of Intergenerational Economic Mobility and Marriage
Intergenerational mobility declined in the second half of the 20th century—simultaneously with the decline in marriage rates and the rise of single parenthood. This study investigated whether county-level intergenerational mobility rates predict family formation patterns. We utilized a county-level measure of intergenerational mobility constructed by Chetty and Hendren for a cohort of young adults born between 1980 and 1986 and raised in lower-in…
Hardship and Hope
Objectives. To examine the impact of Rx Kids—a community-wide and unconditional prenatal and infant cash transfer program in Flint, Michigan—on economic stability, maternal mental health, and well-being. Methods. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we compared outcomes for surveyed Flint mothers who gave birth before and after Rx Kids implementation to those outside the city. Results. Relative to comparisons, mothers exposed to Rx Kids s…
The expanded Child Tax Credit and economic wellbeing of low-income families
Unconditional cash transfers and mental health symptoms among parents with low incomes
The COVID-19 pandemic increased anxiety and depression in the U.S. population, particularly among low-income households, parents, and Black and Hispanic adults. To address the negative impacts of the pandemic, Congress temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in 2021, providing a near-universal, unconditional cash transfer to families with children. Using a quasi-experimental, parameterized difference-in-differences research design, we exa…
The Covid Cash Transfer Study
There is growing interest in the use of unconditional cash transfers as a means to alleviate poverty, yet little is known about the effects of such transfers in the U.S. This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled study of a one‐time $1,000 unconditional cash transfer in May 2020 to families with low incomes in 12 U.S. states. The families were receiving, or had recently received, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit…
In the Aftermath of the Storm
As climate change intensifies, analyzing the barriers to disaster recovery faced by marginalized communities is increasingly important. Using in-depth interviews from the Understanding Communities of Deep Disadvantage project, a community-level investigation of disadvantage in the United States, this study examines participant experiences with the federal disaster recovery system in the wake of Hurricanes Matthew and Florence. Our analysis reveal…
The Interlinkage between Blood Plasma Donation and Poverty in the United States
In 2019, plasma centers in the United States received a record 53.5 million blood donations, roughly triple that collected during the Great Recession. Recent ethnographic research and journalistic accounts connect plasma sales and poverty, an association that would carry important public health implications given the vulnerability of disadvantaged populations. This study is the first to examine a range of socioeconomic characteristics of communit…
Communities Moving Ahead, Falling Behind
Using a multidimensional index weighting factors related to income, health, and social mobility—the Index of Deep Disadvantage (IDD)—we rank the well-being of disadvantaged U.S. counties (initial scores below the median IDD) when they were on the cusp of the Great Recession and then again well into the recovery. We compare the characteristics of counties that saw improvements to those that saw declines. We find that a clear majority of counties w…
Many of the kids are not alright
No Place Called Home
During the 2015–16 school year, 1.3 million students nationwide experienced homelessness. Yet hardships like homelessness represent dynamic rather than static states, and so annual figures understate the cumulative risk that students face over time. Moreover, despite recent efforts to understand eviction and foreclosure as exploitative and racialized processes, there have been few efforts to connect homelessness to these and other structural cond…
The Decline of Cash Assistance and the Well-Being of Poor Households with Children
Since the early 1990s, the social safety net for families with children in the United States has undergone an epochal transformation. Aid to poor working families has become more generous. In contrast, assistance to the deeply poor has become less generous, and what remains more often takes the form of in-kind aid. A historical view finds that this dramatic change parallels others. For centuries, the nature and form of poor relief has been driven…
A Universal Child Allowance
To reduce child poverty and income instability, and eliminate extreme poverty among families with children in the United States, we propose converting the Child Tax Credit and child tax exemption into a universal, monthly child allowance. Our proposal is based on principles we argue should undergird the design of such policies: universality, accessibility, adequate payment levels, and more generous support for young children. Whether benefits sho…
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Lifetime Prevalence of Homelessness in the United States
Homelessness in the United States is often examined using cross-sectional, point-in-time samples. Any experience of homelessness is a risk factor for adverse outcomes, so it is also useful to understand the incidence of homelessness over longer periods. We estimate the lifetime prevalence of homelessness among members of the Baby Boom cohort (n = 6,545) using the 2012 and 2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally represent…
Association of Income and Adversity in Childhood with Adult Health and Well-Being
We analyze data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics–Childhood Retrospective Circumstances Study to explore the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), childhood household income, and adult health and socioeconomic well-being. Building on the ACEs studies and the social causation of health literature, we test three hypotheses: (1) childhood income is associated with ACEs, (2) both childhood income and ACEs are associated wit…
Left Out
Social scientists and historians have identified the exclusion of agricultural workers and domestic servants from social insurance programs during the New Deal as a cause of the racially divided US welfare state. The most prominent explanation for these exclusions is that they originated in a Southern-dominated congress and were deliberately designed to exclude a majority of African-American workers from the emerging welfare state. This article e…
A Day
Expanding the Discourse on Antipoverty Policy
This article proposes that advocates for the poor consider the replacement of the current means-tested safety net in the United States with a Negative Income Tax (NIT), a guaranteed income program that lifts families’ incomes above a minimum threshold. The article highlights gaps in service provision that leave millions in poverty, explains how a NIT could help fill those gaps, and compares current expenditures on major means-tested programs to e…
From Welfare to a Work‐based Safety Net
Increasing Work Opportunities and Reducing Poverty Two Decades After Welfare Reform
Safety Net Care and Midlevel Dental Practitioners
Objectives. We sought to determine the proportion of dental care provided at safety net–type clinics that might be performed by midlevel practitioners. Methods. Data were obtained on 157 328 procedures performed in 2012 at the clinics associated with a Midwestern dental school. Based on procedure codes, we determined the overall proportion, as well as the proportion of visits and patients’ care, that could have been performed by 3 types of practi…
Are Household Food Expenditures Responsive to Entry Into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Objective This study examines changes in household food expenditures in the months directly around entry into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Methods Using monthly data on SNAP participation from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we estimate food‐expenditures‐to‐food‐needs ratio with an event‐study specification. Results Upon entering the program, a substantially lower share of out‐of‐pocket spending accounts for SN…
Do Alternative Base Periods Increase Unemployment Insurance Receipt Among Low‐Educated Unemployed Workers
Unemployment Insurance (UI) is the major social insurance program that protects against lost earnings resulting from involuntary unemployment. Existing literature finds that low‐earning unemployed workers experience difficulty accessing UI benefits. The most prominent policy reform designed to increase rates of monetary eligibility, and thus UI receipt, among these unemployed workers is the Alternative Base Period (ABP). In 2009, the American Rec…
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Material Hardships among Low-Income Households with Children
This study estimates the effects of participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on the risk of food as well as nonfood material hardships experienced by low-income households with children. Data are drawn from the 1996, 2001, and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We examine the relationship between SNAP and material hardships by modeling jointly the likelihood of household participatio…
Rising Extreme Poverty in the United States and the Response of Federal Means-Tested Transfer Programs
This study documents an increase in the prevalence of extreme poverty among US households with children between 1996 and 2011 and assesses the response of major federal means-tested transfer programs. Extreme poverty is defined using a World Bank metric of global poverty: $2 or less, per person, per day. Using the 1996–2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we estimate that in mid-2011, 1.65 million households with …
The welfare reforms of the 1990s and the stratification of material well-being among low-income households with children
Nonstandard Work Schedules
Nonstandard scheduling is a pervasive feature of the American workplace. Drawing from interviews with 54 low‐income mothers employed in six retail workplaces in the Chicago area, and from interviews with representative human resource managers in each workplace, this study demonstrates how employer practices introduce variability and unpredictability into the schedules of female workers who have young children. It also suggests that employee‐drive…
Rising Extreme Poverty in the United States and the Response of Federal Means-Tested Transfer Programs
This study documents an increase in the prevalence of extreme poverty among US households with children between 1996 and 2011 and assesses the response of major federal means-tested transfer programs. Extreme poverty is defined using a World Bank metric of global poverty: $2 or less, per person, per day. Using the 1996–2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we estimate that in mid-2011, 1.65 million households with …
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Material Hardships among Low-Income Households with Children
This study estimates the effects of participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on the risk of food as well as nonfood material hardships experienced by low-income households with children. Data are drawn from the 1996, 2001, and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We examine the relationship between SNAP and material hardships by modeling jointly the likelihood of household participatio…
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Lifetime Prevalence of Homelessness in the United States
Homelessness in the United States is often examined using cross-sectional, point-in-time samples. Any experience of homelessness is a risk factor for adverse outcomes, so it is also useful to understand the incidence of homelessness over longer periods. We estimate the lifetime prevalence of homelessness among members of the Baby Boom cohort (n = 6,545) using the 2012 and 2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally represent…
A Universal Child Allowance
To reduce child poverty and income instability, and eliminate extreme poverty among families with children in the United States, we propose converting the Child Tax Credit and child tax exemption into a universal, monthly child allowance. Our proposal is based on principles we argue should undergird the design of such policies: universality, accessibility, adequate payment levels, and more generous support for young children. Whether benefits sho…
Many of the kids are not alright
A Day
From Welfare to a Work‐based Safety Net
Unemployment Insurance and Low-Educated, Single, Working Mothers before and after Welfare Reform
Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this study examines changing levels of Unemployment Insurance (UI) eligibility and benefits receipt among low-educated, single mothers who entered unemployment between 1990 and 2005. It also examines changing participation in cash welfare and the Food Stamp Program (FSP). Data from 1990–94 and 2001–5 show that low-educated, single mothers who enter unemployment experience an increase in UI eli…
Identifying Key Barriers to Unemployment Insurance for Disadvantaged Workers in the United States
This article seeks to identify key programmatic barriers to access to Unemployment Insurance (UI) faced by two groups of disadvantaged workers in the United States: those in the lowest wage quintile, and part-time workers who are primary wage earners. Analyses use the 2001 Panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a nationally representative, longitudinal survey administered by the United States Census Bureau. Estimates of U…
The Covid Cash Transfer Study
There is growing interest in the use of unconditional cash transfers as a means to alleviate poverty, yet little is known about the effects of such transfers in the U.S. This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled study of a one‐time $1,000 unconditional cash transfer in May 2020 to families with low incomes in 12 U.S. states. The families were receiving, or had recently received, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit…
Expanding the Discourse on Antipoverty Policy
This article proposes that advocates for the poor consider the replacement of the current means-tested safety net in the United States with a Negative Income Tax (NIT), a guaranteed income program that lifts families’ incomes above a minimum threshold. The article highlights gaps in service provision that leave millions in poverty, explains how a NIT could help fill those gaps, and compares current expenditures on major means-tested programs to e…
Left Out
Social scientists and historians have identified the exclusion of agricultural workers and domestic servants from social insurance programs during the New Deal as a cause of the racially divided US welfare state. The most prominent explanation for these exclusions is that they originated in a Southern-dominated congress and were deliberately designed to exclude a majority of African-American workers from the emerging welfare state. This article e…
The Interlinkage between Blood Plasma Donation and Poverty in the United States
In 2019, plasma centers in the United States received a record 53.5 million blood donations, roughly triple that collected during the Great Recession. Recent ethnographic research and journalistic accounts connect plasma sales and poverty, an association that would carry important public health implications given the vulnerability of disadvantaged populations. This study is the first to examine a range of socioeconomic characteristics of communit…
Association of Income and Adversity in Childhood with Adult Health and Well-Being
We analyze data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics–Childhood Retrospective Circumstances Study to explore the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), childhood household income, and adult health and socioeconomic well-being. Building on the ACEs studies and the social causation of health literature, we test three hypotheses: (1) childhood income is associated with ACEs, (2) both childhood income and ACEs are associated wit…
Increasing Work Opportunities and Reducing Poverty Two Decades After Welfare Reform
Do Alternative Base Periods Increase Unemployment Insurance Receipt Among Low‐Educated Unemployed Workers
Unemployment Insurance (UI) is the major social insurance program that protects against lost earnings resulting from involuntary unemployment. Existing literature finds that low‐earning unemployed workers experience difficulty accessing UI benefits. The most prominent policy reform designed to increase rates of monetary eligibility, and thus UI receipt, among these unemployed workers is the Alternative Base Period (ABP). In 2009, the American Rec…
The expanded Child Tax Credit and economic wellbeing of low-income families
No Place Called Home
During the 2015–16 school year, 1.3 million students nationwide experienced homelessness. Yet hardships like homelessness represent dynamic rather than static states, and so annual figures understate the cumulative risk that students face over time. Moreover, despite recent efforts to understand eviction and foreclosure as exploitative and racialized processes, there have been few efforts to connect homelessness to these and other structural cond…
The welfare reforms of the 1990s and the stratification of material well-being among low-income households with children
Nonstandard Work Schedules
Nonstandard scheduling is a pervasive feature of the American workplace. Drawing from interviews with 54 low‐income mothers employed in six retail workplaces in the Chicago area, and from interviews with representative human resource managers in each workplace, this study demonstrates how employer practices introduce variability and unpredictability into the schedules of female workers who have young children. It also suggests that employee‐drive…
State Minimum Wage Laws
As of August 2005, seventeen states have raised their minimum wages above the federal level of $5.15. Using Kingdon's agenda setting model, this article analyzes lessons from a case study of Illinois, the first Midwestern state to raise its minimum, up to $6.50 in January 2005. This legislative success was a result of a mix of factors including a change in the State's political environment with the election of a new governor, and collaboration be…
The Development of an Unequal Social Safety Net
The U.S. social safety net exacerbates labor market inequalities rather than ameliorating them. This paper traces this theme within an important historical case study: the emergence of the employer-based health insurance system. Employers became the dominant and tax-preferred provider of health insurance in the United States without any federal legislative action. Understanding how this happened may inform current reform efforts. This case study …
Nonstandard Work and Economic Crisis
Many workers experience nonstandard work arrangements, such as being part time, an independent contractor, or working non-daytime hours. This article reviews existing literature and presents primary data on the United States' nonstandard workforce to make predictions about its possible growth during the current economic crisis. Analyses suggest substantial but temporary growth in the involuntary part-time workforce, as well as continued long-term…
Identifying Key Barriers to Unemployment Insurance for Disadvantaged Workers in the United States
This article seeks to identify key programmatic barriers to access to Unemployment Insurance (UI) faced by two groups of disadvantaged workers in the United States: those in the lowest wage quintile, and part-time workers who are primary wage earners. Analyses use the 2001 Panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a nationally representative, longitudinal survey administered by the United States Census Bureau. Estimates of U…
Unemployment Insurance and Low-Educated, Single, Working Mothers before and after Welfare Reform
Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this study examines changing levels of Unemployment Insurance (UI) eligibility and benefits receipt among low-educated, single mothers who entered unemployment between 1990 and 2005. It also examines changing participation in cash welfare and the Food Stamp Program (FSP). Data from 1990–94 and 2001–5 show that low-educated, single mothers who enter unemployment experience an increase in UI eli…
The welfare reforms of the 1990s and the stratification of material well-being among low-income households with children
Do Alternative Base Periods Increase Unemployment Insurance Receipt Among Low‐Educated Unemployed Workers
Unemployment Insurance (UI) is the major social insurance program that protects against lost earnings resulting from involuntary unemployment. Existing literature finds that low‐earning unemployed workers experience difficulty accessing UI benefits. The most prominent policy reform designed to increase rates of monetary eligibility, and thus UI receipt, among these unemployed workers is the Alternative Base Period (ABP). In 2009, the American Rec…
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Material Hardships among Low-Income Households with Children
This study estimates the effects of participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on the risk of food as well as nonfood material hardships experienced by low-income households with children. Data are drawn from the 1996, 2001, and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We examine the relationship between SNAP and material hardships by modeling jointly the likelihood of household participatio…
Rising Extreme Poverty in the United States and the Response of Federal Means-Tested Transfer Programs
This study documents an increase in the prevalence of extreme poverty among US households with children between 1996 and 2011 and assesses the response of major federal means-tested transfer programs. Extreme poverty is defined using a World Bank metric of global poverty: $2 or less, per person, per day. Using the 1996–2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we estimate that in mid-2011, 1.65 million households with …
Expanding the Discourse on Antipoverty Policy
This article proposes that advocates for the poor consider the replacement of the current means-tested safety net in the United States with a Negative Income Tax (NIT), a guaranteed income program that lifts families’ incomes above a minimum threshold. The article highlights gaps in service provision that leave millions in poverty, explains how a NIT could help fill those gaps, and compares current expenditures on major means-tested programs to e…
From Welfare to a Work‐based Safety Net
Increasing Work Opportunities and Reducing Poverty Two Decades After Welfare Reform
Safety Net Care and Midlevel Dental Practitioners
Objectives. We sought to determine the proportion of dental care provided at safety net–type clinics that might be performed by midlevel practitioners. Methods. Data were obtained on 157 328 procedures performed in 2012 at the clinics associated with a Midwestern dental school. Based on procedure codes, we determined the overall proportion, as well as the proportion of visits and patients’ care, that could have been performed by 3 types of practi…
Are Household Food Expenditures Responsive to Entry Into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Objective This study examines changes in household food expenditures in the months directly around entry into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Methods Using monthly data on SNAP participation from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we estimate food‐expenditures‐to‐food‐needs ratio with an event‐study specification. Results Upon entering the program, a substantially lower share of out‐of‐pocket spending accounts for SN…
Left Out
Social scientists and historians have identified the exclusion of agricultural workers and domestic servants from social insurance programs during the New Deal as a cause of the racially divided US welfare state. The most prominent explanation for these exclusions is that they originated in a Southern-dominated congress and were deliberately designed to exclude a majority of African-American workers from the emerging welfare state. This article e…
A Day
A Universal Child Allowance
To reduce child poverty and income instability, and eliminate extreme poverty among families with children in the United States, we propose converting the Child Tax Credit and child tax exemption into a universal, monthly child allowance. Our proposal is based on principles we argue should undergird the design of such policies: universality, accessibility, adequate payment levels, and more generous support for young children. Whether benefits sho…
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Lifetime Prevalence of Homelessness in the United States
Homelessness in the United States is often examined using cross-sectional, point-in-time samples. Any experience of homelessness is a risk factor for adverse outcomes, so it is also useful to understand the incidence of homelessness over longer periods. We estimate the lifetime prevalence of homelessness among members of the Baby Boom cohort (n = 6,545) using the 2012 and 2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally represent…
Association of Income and Adversity in Childhood with Adult Health and Well-Being
We analyze data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics–Childhood Retrospective Circumstances Study to explore the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), childhood household income, and adult health and socioeconomic well-being. Building on the ACEs studies and the social causation of health literature, we test three hypotheses: (1) childhood income is associated with ACEs, (2) both childhood income and ACEs are associated wit…
The Decline of Cash Assistance and the Well-Being of Poor Households with Children
Since the early 1990s, the social safety net for families with children in the United States has undergone an epochal transformation. Aid to poor working families has become more generous. In contrast, assistance to the deeply poor has become less generous, and what remains more often takes the form of in-kind aid. A historical view finds that this dramatic change parallels others. For centuries, the nature and form of poor relief has been driven…
Many of the kids are not alright
No Place Called Home
During the 2015–16 school year, 1.3 million students nationwide experienced homelessness. Yet hardships like homelessness represent dynamic rather than static states, and so annual figures understate the cumulative risk that students face over time. Moreover, despite recent efforts to understand eviction and foreclosure as exploitative and racialized processes, there have been few efforts to connect homelessness to these and other structural cond…
The Interlinkage between Blood Plasma Donation and Poverty in the United States
In 2019, plasma centers in the United States received a record 53.5 million blood donations, roughly triple that collected during the Great Recession. Recent ethnographic research and journalistic accounts connect plasma sales and poverty, an association that would carry important public health implications given the vulnerability of disadvantaged populations. This study is the first to examine a range of socioeconomic characteristics of communit…
Communities Moving Ahead, Falling Behind
Using a multidimensional index weighting factors related to income, health, and social mobility—the Index of Deep Disadvantage (IDD)—we rank the well-being of disadvantaged U.S. counties (initial scores below the median IDD) when they were on the cusp of the Great Recession and then again well into the recovery. We compare the characteristics of counties that saw improvements to those that saw declines. We find that a clear majority of counties w…
Economics (24 works) · Demographic economics (17 works) · Economic growth (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (12 works) · Poverty (12 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Demography (9 works) · Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations (9 works)