C Heflin
Biographic Data
| ID | 51946 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Heflin |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Heflin |
| SIGNATURE | HEFLIN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Missouri |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9323-2027 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 568 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1944 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
The Glass Is Half Full
Highlights Employed, social welfare–connected mothers experience a substantial reduction in earnings around a child's birth. Social welfare programs, assuming full take-up, can offset these lost earnings after birth but not during pregnancy. Most social welfare benefits available around birth are nutrition assistance, which are not fungible. These mothers spend about six months out of the labor force, with Black mothers returning earlier, on aver…
Participation across public programs among children in low-income families
Understanding Factors Associated with 911 and 988 Use in Mental Health Crises
The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline was launched in July 2022 as an alternative to 911 for mental health crises. However, little is known about the factors influencing decisions to use 911 or 988 among individuals most likely to benefit from 988, including those with suicidal ideation. This study analyzes individual characteristics associated with the likelihood of calling 911 during a mental health crisis and examines awareness of, willingness t…
Earnings and Employment Patterns Following Child-Care Subsidy Receipt
Employment and earnings instability is common, particularly among low-income families, and can interfere with child-care arrangements. Child-care subsidies are designed to support parents’ labor force participation and earnings, but the subsidy program’s reach is limited, and enrollment may be hindered by changes in parents’ employment or income; in turn, changes in child-care subsidy participation may lead to changes in parents’ employment statu…
The Effects of Waiving WIC Physical Presence Requirements on Program Caseloads
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) requires applicants to visit local offices for in-person appointments. The face-to-face nature of WIC has been praised for fostering personal engagement between workers and participants, but some scholars argue that in-person requirements contribute to WIC’s low take-up rate (51 percent in 2017). Because of public health concerns during COVID-19, the federal governm…
Material Hardship and the Living Arrangements of Older Americans
Patterns of Earnings and Employment by Worker Sex, Race, and Ethnicity Using State Administrative Data
Local Control, Discretion, and Administrative Burden
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture waived the certification interview for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), substantially reducing the administrative burden associated with SNAP application for both applicants and agencies. Using primary policy data collected from ten county-administered states, we find that only 27% of counties implemented the interview waiver. Further, models of local decision…
Inequality in literacy skills at kindergarten entry at the intersections of social programs and race
Current and Future Food Insufficiency During Covid-19
Cognitive Impairment and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Take-Up Among the Eligible Older Americans
One barrier to SNAP take-up among older adults may be cognitive impairment with the size of effect differing by gender and living arrangement. Policymakers may want to consider initiatives to increase SNAP participation among older adults, including a focus on further simplification of eligibility and recertification processes that reduce administrative burden
Room to grow
Below the Tip of the Iceberg
The Social and Community Consequences of the Opioid Epidemic
We provide a brief orientation to the articles that comprise this volume, which is an effort to understand the consequences of the opioid epidemic in a variety of societal and community domains. These domains include child welfare, living arrangements, education, food insecurity, housing, and public budgets, and they are often paid scant attention compared to research that focuses on the direct effects of opioid use. We give an overview of the ar…
Food Insecurity and the Opioid Crisis
The opioid epidemic has increased adult mortality, disrupted families, and changed labor supply-all factors that are independently associated with poverty and food insecurity. We explore the relationship between the opioid crisis and food insecurity at the state level, first by examining the relationship of drug-related mortalities to food insecurity, and then by exploiting cross-state variations in OxyContin misuse prior to reformulation of the …
Exposure to Food Insecurity during Adolescence and Educational Attainment
Previous research has documented the negative consequences of exposure to food insecurity over the early childhood period in terms of health and cognitive and behavioral outcomes, but less research has explored the consequences of exposure to food insecurity at other points in childhood. We examine the association between food insecurity during adolescence and educational attainment. We begin by exploring a conceptual framework for the potential …
Giving kids a boost
Well-child visits are protective for child health but underutilized in the United States. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the largest federal food assistance program in the United States, has been shown to reduce food insecurity and may also promote child health by supporting preventative health care utilization. We examined the relationship between SNAP participation and infant well-child visits using state administrative d…
Material Hardship Among Immigrants in the United States
Testing behavioral interventions designed to improve on-time SNAP recertification
We report results from a series of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) run between January 2019 and February 2020 testing behavioral interventions designed to increase the likelihood that SNAP recipients recertify on-time in Hennepin County, the most populous county in Minnesota. Given the different levels of governance and the abundance of qualifying rules and processes that low-income households must negotiate to obtain and retain SNAP food ass…
Disability, food insecurity by nativity, citizenship, and duration
Prior research examines the prevalence of either disability or food insecurity among immigrants. We examine whether the presence of a disability operates as a stronger predictor of food insecurity among prime-aged immigrants relative to the US-born. Probit models estimate the relationship of disability with food insecurity among immigrants and distinguish by duration of US residence and citizenship status using nationally representative data from…
When States Align Social Welfare Programs
Objective In the United States, state social services rarely coordinate across departments, a practice that could both increase receipt and reduce administrative burden. The purpose of this article is to investigate the state‐level conditions associated with the adoption of policies that benefit participants in multiple social welfare programs, focusing on the case of the child support income exclusion for SNAP benefit eligibility calculations. M…
Administrative Churn in SNAP and Health Care Utilization Patterns
BACKGROUND: Administrative churn occurs when a household exits the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and then returns to the program within 4 months. Although a number of studies have examined health care utilization patterns related to Medicaid administrative churn less is known about health care utilization patterns among Medicaid-insured SNAP enrollees. OBJECTIVES: To investigate the characteristics and health care utilization p…
External Review Board
Adolescent food insecurity and risky behaviors and mental health during the transition to adulthood
Experimental Evidence of a Work Support Strategy That Is Effective for At-Risk Families
This article examines the effects of an intensive life skills education and home visiting program, Building Nebraska Families (BNF), on the employment, earnings, and personal and family well-being of work-mandatory cash welfare recipients. Based on a randomized controlled trial, the analysis used survey and administrative data for more than 600 hard-to-employ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients across 11 sites in Nebraska. S…
Does it pay to move from welfare to work
The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act requires welfare recipients to look for work and has made it more difficult for nonworking recipients to remain on the welfare rolls. In addition, the economic boom of the 1990s and changes in federal and state policies have raised the net income gain associated with moving from welfare to work. This paper analyzes data from a panel survey of single mothers, all of whom rece…
Food insufficiency and women's mental health
Community Social Capital and Entrepreneurship
The literature on social capital and entrepreneurship often explores individual benefits of social capital, such as the role of personal networks in promoting self-employment. In this article, we instead examine social capital's public good aspects, arguing that the benefits of social trust and organization memberships accrue not just to the individual but to the community at large. We test these arguments using individual data from the 2000 Cens…
Poverty in the family
Poverty, Material Hardship, and Depression
Objective. Mental health disorders are of great social, economic, and policy concern. A higher incidence of major depressive disorder has been reported among women living in or near poverty. Our study examines the extent to which the relationship between income and depression is mediated by measures of material hardship. Methods. We use measures of depression at two points in time from the longitudinal Fragile Families Survey to better discern th…
The Structure of Material Hardship in U.S. Households
Motivated by the growing interest in and the usage of measures of material hardship, together with the lack of a comprehensive theoretical understanding of the how indicators of material hardship relate to one another, we develop and test five conceptual models of the structural coherence of material hardship. While many previous analyses have relied on a unidimensional model of hardship, we argue that this is not conceptually and empirically suf…
Mitigating Material Hardship
Despite decades of research, little is known about the contours of material hardship and how the social processes underlying specific domains of hardship are similar and different. We use qualitative interview data to examine five different domains of material hardship: housing, bill-paying, food, medical, and clothing hardships. While mothers use social program participation, reliance on social networks, and individual strategies to mitigate har…
Food Insufficiency and Physical and Mental Health in a Longitudinal Survey of Welfare Recipients
Food insufficiency is a significant problem in the United States, and poor African American women with children are at especially high risk. An inadequate household food supply can potentially affect the well-being of household members, but it is difficult to distinguish the effects of food insufficiency from risk factors for poor health that are also common among the food insufficient, such as poverty. We examined food insufficiency and physical…
Work Trajectories, Income Changes, and Food Insufficiency in a Michigan Welfare Population
This article examines determinants of changes in food insufficiency status over time in a Michigan welfare sample. The studied determinants include individual constraints on coping abilities, work‐related demands, and resources of households. Analyses use logistic regressions based on data from four waves of the Women's Employment Study. Findings suggest that, without controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, hours worked, transportation expenses…
Dynamics of Material Hardship in the Women’s Employment Study
An abundance of literature examines the dynamics of poverty, but little research considers the dynamics of material hardship. This work analyzes data from a welfare sample to determine how common experiences of material hardship are over time, if some forms of material hardship are more common than others, and if women experience multiple hardships. Data come from five waves of the Women’s Employment Study and measure six different forms of mater…
Kin Effects on Black-White Account and Home Ownership
This article combines the literature on kin networks and racial disparities in asset ownership. Specifically, we examine the effects of kin characteristics-sibling poverty and parental poverty, education, and occupation-on financial account ownership and home ownership. We find that kin matter for these outcomes. Having a poor sibling and coming from a poor family are negatively associated with account and home ownership while mother's education …
The Role of Social Positioning in Observed Patterns of Material Hardship
Long-term trends in the federal income poverty measure are well documented and researched, but long-term trends in material hardship, as an alternative measure of economic well-being, are much less well known. In part, this is because data limitations have precluded the study of material hardship at multiple data points over time. Using data from the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation and repeat observations approximately one year ap…
Adolescent food insecurity and risky behaviors and mental health during the transition to adulthood
Veteran Status and Material Hardship
Veterans are a sizable and policy-relevant demographic group in the United States, yet little is known about their economic well-being. Although having a work-limiting disability is known to be associated with material hardship, no known study compares material hardship between veteran households and nonveteran households or investigates whether work-limiting disability moderates the association between veteran status and material hardship. This …
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Food Insufficiency
Objective: This study examines racial/ethnic disparities in the experience of food insufficiency among families with infants, focusing on the roles of socioeconomic characteristics. Method: We examine the SEED for Oklahoma Kids experiment data collected from a probability sample of White, African American, American Indian, and Hispanic caregivers of infants randomly selected from Oklahoma’s birth certificates (N = 2,652). Data are analyzed using …
The Child and Adult Care Food Program and Food Insecurity
The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) provides cash reimbursement to family day care, child-care centers, homeless shelters, and after-school programs for meals and snacks served to children. Despite young children’s known vulnerability to fluctuations in nutritional intake, prior literature has largely neglected the contributions of the CACFP to reducing household food insecurity. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Bi…
Exposure to Food Insecurity during Adolescence and Educational Attainment
Previous research has documented the negative consequences of exposure to food insecurity over the early childhood period in terms of health and cognitive and behavioral outcomes, but less research has explored the consequences of exposure to food insecurity at other points in childhood. We examine the association between food insecurity during adolescence and educational attainment. We begin by exploring a conceptual framework for the potential …
SNAP benefits and childhood asthma
Clients’ Perspectives on a Technology-Based Food Assistance Application System
The expansion of e-government is reshaping how disadvantaged groups access the social safety net, yet very little is known about clients’ experiences with modernized systems. We examine client experiences applying to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program in one state that has recently moved to an “online-only” system. Overall, more than half of the 26 applicants stated a preference for the traditional caseworker model, even though some …
Work-Related Disability, Veteran Status, and Poverty
The authors examine the interrelationships between work-related disability, veteran, and poverty statuses using data from the 1992–2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. They find that households with nondisabled veterans present have a lower likelihood of poverty, but that advantage is severely eroded when the veteran or another family member has a work-limiting disability. Nevertheless, all veteran households have substa…
Food Insufficiency, Food Stamp Participation, and Mental Health
Objectives. This study examines whether the mental health consequences associated with food insufficiency vary by food stamp participation status and/or the value of the food stamp benefit received. Methods. We use longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics along with fixed‐effect methods that control for unobserved heterogeneity to test our hypotheses. Results. We find that, conditional on the food stamp benefit amount, the emotio…
Participation in the National School Lunch Program and food security
The impact of aging out of WIC on food security in households with children
Below the Tip of the Iceberg
Food Insecurity and the Opioid Crisis
The opioid epidemic has increased adult mortality, disrupted families, and changed labor supply-all factors that are independently associated with poverty and food insecurity. We explore the relationship between the opioid crisis and food insecurity at the state level, first by examining the relationship of drug-related mortalities to food insecurity, and then by exploiting cross-state variations in OxyContin misuse prior to reformulation of the …
The Urban Status of Rural Migrants
Journal Article The Urban Status of Rural Migrants Get access Howard W. Beers, Howard W. Beers University of Kentucky Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Catherine Heflin Catherine Heflin University of Kentucky Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 23, Issue 1, October 1944, Pages 32–37, https://doi.org/10.2307/2572377 Published: 01 October 1944
Social and environmental predictors of maternal depression in current and recent welfare recipients
Depression is highly prevalent in welfare recipients, and is associated with failure to move from welfare to work. This paper examines the relationship between social and environmental factors in a large, community-based sample of mothers who currently or recently received welfare benefits. Specific and modifiable risk factors related to poverty, gender, and race were found to predict major depression beyond traditional risk factors. Research and…
Food Insufficiency and the Physical and Mental Health of Low-Income Women
Poor women with children are disproportionately represented among the food insufficient. Recent research has linked food insufficiency with dietary deficiencies, but further research linking this problem to health and mental health problems is needed to inform health and social policy. We analyzed the relationship between food insufficiency and physical and mental health in a random sample of 724 single women who were welfare recipients in Februa…
Does it pay to move from welfare to work
The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act requires welfare recipients to look for work and has made it more difficult for nonworking recipients to remain on the welfare rolls. In addition, the economic boom of the 1990s and changes in federal and state policies have raised the net income gain associated with moving from welfare to work. This paper analyzes data from a panel survey of single mothers, all of whom rece…
Kin Effects on Black-White Account and Home Ownership
This article combines the literature on kin networks and racial disparities in asset ownership. Specifically, we examine the effects of kin characteristics-sibling poverty and parental poverty, education, and occupation-on financial account ownership and home ownership. We find that kin matter for these outcomes. Having a poor sibling and coming from a poor family are negatively associated with account and home ownership while mother's education …
Food Insufficiency and Physical and Mental Health in a Longitudinal Survey of Welfare Recipients
Food insufficiency is a significant problem in the United States, and poor African American women with children are at especially high risk. An inadequate household food supply can potentially affect the well-being of household members, but it is difficult to distinguish the effects of food insufficiency from risk factors for poor health that are also common among the food insufficient, such as poverty. We examined food insufficiency and physical…
Does Welfare Participation Affect Women's Wages
Objectives. This study examines how welfare participation and employment affect women's wages. Methods. We use longitudinal data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation and fixed‐effects regression models to test our hypotheses. Results. Our results indicate that time spent on welfare while unemployed results in a wage penalty that is similar to the penalty associated with nonwelfare work breaks. Time spent on welfare while emplo…
Food insufficiency and women's mental health
Dynamics of Material Hardship in the Women’s Employment Study
An abundance of literature examines the dynamics of poverty, but little research considers the dynamics of material hardship. This work analyzes data from a welfare sample to determine how common experiences of material hardship are over time, if some forms of material hardship are more common than others, and if women experience multiple hardships. Data come from five waves of the Women’s Employment Study and measure six different forms of mater…
Poverty in the family
Work Trajectories, Income Changes, and Food Insufficiency in a Michigan Welfare Population
This article examines determinants of changes in food insufficiency status over time in a Michigan welfare sample. The studied determinants include individual constraints on coping abilities, work‐related demands, and resources of households. Analyses use logistic regressions based on data from four waves of the Women's Employment Study. Findings suggest that, without controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, hours worked, transportation expenses…
Food Insufficiency, Food Stamp Participation, and Mental Health
Objectives. This study examines whether the mental health consequences associated with food insufficiency vary by food stamp participation status and/or the value of the food stamp benefit received. Methods. We use longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics along with fixed‐effect methods that control for unobserved heterogeneity to test our hypotheses. Results. We find that, conditional on the food stamp benefit amount, the emotio…
Poverty, Material Hardship, and Depression
Objective. Mental health disorders are of great social, economic, and policy concern. A higher incidence of major depressive disorder has been reported among women living in or near poverty. Our study examines the extent to which the relationship between income and depression is mediated by measures of material hardship. Methods. We use measures of depression at two points in time from the longitudinal Fragile Families Survey to better discern th…
The Structure of Material Hardship in U.S. Households
Motivated by the growing interest in and the usage of measures of material hardship, together with the lack of a comprehensive theoretical understanding of the how indicators of material hardship relate to one another, we develop and test five conceptual models of the structural coherence of material hardship. While many previous analyses have relied on a unidimensional model of hardship, we argue that this is not conceptually and empirically suf…
Work-Related Disability, Veteran Status, and Poverty
The authors examine the interrelationships between work-related disability, veteran, and poverty statuses using data from the 1992–2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. They find that households with nondisabled veterans present have a lower likelihood of poverty, but that advantage is severely eroded when the veteran or another family member has a work-limiting disability. Nevertheless, all veteran households have substa…
Non-income effects of welfare receipt on early childhood cognitive scores
Mitigating Material Hardship
Despite decades of research, little is known about the contours of material hardship and how the social processes underlying specific domains of hardship are similar and different. We use qualitative interview data to examine five different domains of material hardship: housing, bill-paying, food, medical, and clothing hardships. While mothers use social program participation, reliance on social networks, and individual strategies to mitigate har…
Clients’ Perspectives on a Technology-Based Food Assistance Application System
The expansion of e-government is reshaping how disadvantaged groups access the social safety net, yet very little is known about clients’ experiences with modernized systems. We examine client experiences applying to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program in one state that has recently moved to an “online-only” system. Overall, more than half of the 26 applicants stated a preference for the traditional caseworker model, even though some …
Veteran Status and Material Hardship
Veterans are a sizable and policy-relevant demographic group in the United States, yet little is known about their economic well-being. Although having a work-limiting disability is known to be associated with material hardship, no known study compares material hardship between veteran households and nonveteran households or investigates whether work-limiting disability moderates the association between veteran status and material hardship. This …
Community Social Capital and Entrepreneurship
The literature on social capital and entrepreneurship often explores individual benefits of social capital, such as the role of personal networks in promoting self-employment. In this article, we instead examine social capital's public good aspects, arguing that the benefits of social trust and organization memberships accrue not just to the individual but to the community at large. We test these arguments using individual data from the 2000 Cens…
Participation in the National School Lunch Program and food security
Unemployment insurance effects on child academic outcomes
My Brother's Keeper? The Association Between Having Siblings in Poor Health and Wealth Accumulation
When confronted with the economic costs of addressing a serious health problem, many American households do not possess the ability to deal with the crises on their own and may turn to family members for help. Using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we examine if the level of wealth held by individuals is related to the health problems of their siblings. We find evidence that having a sibling who has experienced a health …
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Food Insufficiency
Objective: This study examines racial/ethnic disparities in the experience of food insufficiency among families with infants, focusing on the roles of socioeconomic characteristics. Method: We examine the SEED for Oklahoma Kids experiment data collected from a probability sample of White, African American, American Indian, and Hispanic caregivers of infants randomly selected from Oklahoma’s birth certificates (N = 2,652). Data are analyzed using …
The Great Recession and SNAP Caseloads
Using detailed administrative data for the 2003 to 2010 period, the authors contrast Florida’s and Oregon’s dramatically different participation dynamics, assessing the expansion and extension of benefits before, during, and after the Great Recession. State differences in how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been administered help explain differences in SNAP use. Although the recession led to increased need and SNAP participat…
Economics (41 works) · Medicine (35 works) · Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations (34 works) · Psychology (32 works) · Demographic economics (27 works) · Economic growth (26 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Geography (21 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (21 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (20 works)