The economic circumstances in which children grow up have garnered much scholarly attention due to their close associations with well-being over the life course. While it has been well-documented that children are increasingly growing up in households where their primary financial support comes from their mother, regardless of whether she is partnered or single, the consequences for household economic well-being are unclear. We use the 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation to quantify how a mother's transition into primary earner status affects the economic well-being of her household and if the effects differ based on her relationship status. On average, household income declines and more households are unable to meet their economic needs once the mother becomes the primary earner. However, these declines in income are concentrated among partnered-mother households and mothers who transition from partnered to single during the year. At the same time, although many single mothers see an increase in household income, the majority of these households are still unable to meet their economic needs. These findings suggest that the shift to a welfare system that requires employment coupled with structural changes in the labor market have created financial hardship for most families.

This article assesses how the economic context of higher education expansion since the mid-20th century has shaped families' financial lives-in terms of income and wealth/debt-as well as how these trends have differed for Black and White women and men. We use data from the NLSY-79 (comprising trailing-edge Baby Boomers) and NLSY-97 (comprising early Millennials) to show how academically similar students in these two cohorts fared in terms of educational attainment, household income, household wealth, and total student debt accrued by age 35. While we discuss findings across race-gender groups, our results call attention to the education-related economic disadvantages faced by Black women that have accelerated across cohorts. Over time, Black women's educational attainment has increased substantially, and high-achieving Black women, in particular, have become uniquely likely to progress beyond the BA. But while high-achieving Black women have made many advances in higher education, they also have become more likely than similarly high-achieving White men, White women, and Black men to have zero or negative wealth at the household level, and to accrue student debt for themselves and for their children. Our findings demonstrate that the costs of expanded access to credit for higher education have not been borne equally across race, gender, and achievement, and that these patterns have multigenerational financial consequences for college attendees and their families.

We examined the role of couples' division of labor in the risk of union dissolution among parents of young children in Chile. We looked at whether specialization in the labor market and domestic work predicts union dissolution, and whether these associations differ by parents' marital status and mother's education. Using panel data from the Chilean (ELPI) 2010 and 2012 waves, we found that specialization in the division of labor is associated with a lower probability of union dissolution among parents of young children in Chile. Unlike prior evidence for the US and the Netherlands, specialization is stabilizing for both married and cohabiting couples. However, there are differences by mother's education. Among mothers with high school education or less, specialization in the division of labor is associated with a lower probability of divorce and separation. On the other hand, among mothers with at least some college education, specialization has no advantage over equality in generating more union stability. Our findings shed light on how the interaction of couple's division of labor and socioeconomic disadvantage may create unequal economic prospects for women and their children following union dissolution.

Tandas, the Mexican variation of lending circles, are an informal financial practice used among Mexican American communities. Tandas are an important asset in families' resource management strategies, yet the practice is largely unrecognized in the resource management literature and devalued by traditional financial institutions. A qualitative study was conducted to investigate tanda participation of twelve Mexican American individuals across the midwestern United States. This study aimed to develop a better understanding of participants' motivations to enter, the other financial management strategies employed by participants, and the tanda's significance to family resource management. Findings revealed that participants' motivations to participate in a tanda relate to financial accessibility and cultural preferences; participants utilize a range of complementary financial management strategies concurrently with the tanda; and participants perceived the tanda as conducive to their family's financial goals and well-being, despite acknowledging the risks associated with participation. Developing a better understanding of the tanda provides insights into the ways culture serves as a conduit through which family and individual goals are realized, financial capability is bolstered, and uncertainty wrought by economic and political contexts is reduced.

As an absolute measure of deprivation poverty fails to capture the impact pandemic-related disruptions had on households. In this study, we use data from the Ypsilanti COVID-19 Study, a cross-sectional survey of 609 residents taken during the summer of 2020, to control for pandemic-related disruptions on bill-paying and food hardship. Using logistic regression models in which specific forms of bill-paying (i.e. late paying rent, late paying utilities) and food hardships (i.e. eating less over 7 days, worried food will run out) served as dependent variables, we find that disruptions to household finances, particularly job loss, significantly increased the likelihood of experiencing bill-paying and food hardship, respectively. Our study also controls for the type of hardship experienced to see which strategies households employed during the pandemic to exit material hardship. Through logistic regression models on methods of exiting material hardship, we find the type of hardship experienced was not predictive of applying for either SNAP or UI. Moreover, we find UI was less accessible to low-income individuals experiencing hardship. The findings from our study elaborate the relationship between pandemic-related disruptions and material hardship, and indicate to policymakers that preventing hardship in the first place is much more meaningful to households than attempting to use policy to bring households out of hardship once they experience it.

The carer-employee experience has undergone multiple shifts during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study seeks to understand how changes in the workplace as a result of the pandemic have impacted employed carers with their ability to perform both care obligations and paid work responsibilities. Using an online workplace-wide survey at a large Canadian firm, we conducted an environmental scan of: the current state of workplace supports and accommodations, supervisor attitudes, and carer-employee burden and health. Our findings demonstrate that while employees are generally in good health, care burden and time spent caregiving has been higher during COVID-19. Notably, employee presenteeism is higher during the pandemic than it was previously, with carer-employees experiencing significantly reduced levels of co-worker support. The most common workplace adaptation to COVID-19, work-from-home, was preferred by all employees as it allowed greater schedule control. However, this comes at the cost of reduced communications and sense of workplace culture, especially for carer-employees. We identified several actionable changes within the workplace, including: greater visibility of existing carer resources, and standardized training of managers on carer issues.

With shorter durations and fewer barriers to entry, reskilling programs may serve as vehicles for social mobility and equity, as well as tools for creating a more adaptive workforce and inclusive economy. Nevertheless, much of the limited large-scale research on these types of programs was conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, given the social and economic disruptions spurred by the pandemic, our ability to understand the impact of these types of programs in recent labor market conditions is limited. We fill this gap by leveraging three waves of a longitudinal household financial survey collected across all 50 US states during the pandemic. Through descriptive and inferential methods, we explore the sociodemographic characteristics related to reskilling and associated motivations, facilitators, and barriers, as well as the relationships between reskilling and measures of social mobility. We find that reskilling is positively related to entrepreneurship and, for Black respondents, to optimism. Moreover, we find that reskilling is not merely a tool for upward social mobility, but also economic stability. However, our results demonstrate that reskilling opportunities are stratified across race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status through both formal and informal mechanisms. We close with a discussion of implications for policy and practice.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between household employment insecurity and the risk of children's exposure to household material deprivation in Spain and Portugal. Specifically, using EU-SILC microdata for 2012, 2016 and 2020, it examines how this relationship evolved during the Post-Great Recession period. Although in both countries there was an improvement in the employment situation of individuals and families after the Great Recession, the main findings reflect an increase in the risk of children's exposure to material deprivation in households where no adults have a secure job. However, there are some differences between the two countries. In the case of Spain, the results seem to indicate that the incidence of household employment insecurity on material deprivation was higher in 2016 and 2020 than in 2012. In Portugal, the increase in the effect of employment insecurity on deprivation seems to have occurred only in 2020, the year the Covid-19 pandemic began.

In this study, we conduct field experiments with 196 worker-parent pairs from two companies in China and South Korea and explore factors that affect the similarity of risk preferences between parents and their offspring. In the Chinese data, we show more similar risk preferences between parents and their offspring when there are higher levels of parental involvement and financial parenting. In contrast, in the Korean data, a more demanding parenting style contributes to intergenerational transmission. These effects are mainly captured by the intergenerational transmission from Chinese mothers to their offspring and from Korean fathers to their offspring. In addition, we find that in our study, same-gender transmission contributes highly to intergenerational transmission, and the risk preferences of Chinese workers and their parents are more similar than those of Korean workers and their parents. We also discuss potential differences in the intergenerational transmission of risk preferences between China and Korea and Western countries. Our study provides a better understanding of the formation of individuals' risk preferences.

The Family Stress Model framework proposes that household income can influence child and youth development through caregiver psychological distress. While prior studies have observed stronger associations among households with lower income, the role of assets has been ignored. This is unfortunate, as many existing policies and practices that intend to improve child and family well-being are focused on assets. The purpose of this study is to clarify whether asset poverty moderates the direct and indirect effects of paths linking household income, caregiver psychological distress, and adolescent problematic behaviors. Using the 2017 and 2019 Panel Study of Income Dynamic Main Study and 2019 and 2020 Child Development Supplements, we find that the family stress processes consisting of household income, caregiver psychological distress, and adolescent problematic behaviors are less intensive for families with more assets. These findings not only add our knowledge of FSM by taking account the moderating role of assets but also advance our understanding that assets can benefit child and family well-being through alleviating family stress processes.

We examine how expenditure changes at retirement during an institutionally and economically uncertain period when a series of pension reforms and cuts were implemented. Overall, we fail to confirm that consumption declines at retirement using data from Greece (2008-2018). Any estimated declines come from turbulent years when major pension cuts were applied. Expenditure drops at retirement were due to pension income shocks, especially for those who were particularly dependent on pension income. Further checks support the presence of an income shock mechanism for retirees who are relatively more treated during the crisis sub-period. Given an aging population and the ongoing global turbulence, our results offer valuable insights.

Financial well-being is becoming more prominent in policy, research, and the financial sector. However, there is a lack of understanding of its meaning, and the vast majority of financial well-being research employs quantitative methods whereas recent literature reviews advocate for qualitative studies into the meaning of financial well-being and its associations with age. We contribute to that by conducting exploratory qualitative research into the phenomenon of perceived financial well-being and its components. It is based on three studies each of which used in-depth semi-structured interviews ( = 47). The first key finding is that youth perceive financial well-being to be comprised of three components: keeping the current lifestyle and making ends meet; achieving desired lifestyle; and achieving financial freedom. In contrast, older groups distinguish only two: keeping and achieving the lifestyle in the present and in the future. The second finding is that the definition of financial freedom differs across age groups. Young people aspire to become financially independent, while middle-aged individuals prioritize supporting their children, and older people are afraid of becoming a financial burden. Third, regardless of age, many do not plan, save or invest for securing their financial well-being. We conclude by proposing implications for increasing financial well-being in different age groups, and suggesting paths for further investigation.

In this study, Korean time-use survey data for coupled households is analyzed to show that unpaid work time is endogenous in its relationship with paid work time because the views of traditional gender roles affect gender disparity in unpaid work time. The data not only includes time allocation between husbands and wives but also their views of traditional gender roles within their households, and this information can represent gendered social norms that can potentially explain the distribution of unpaid work between husbands and wives. The control function model is estimated to identify the tradeoff between unpaid work time and paid work time by solving the endogeneity problem. The results of this study show that wives' unpaid work is likely to be affected by gendered social norms and that the effect can be larger for those having children. In addition, only in the case of wives, unpaid work time is found to be negatively associated with whether to work full-time, showing that wives' burden of unpaid work could prevent them from working full time. The results indicate that it is crucial to recognize the need to change gendered social norms to address an asymmetric division of unpaid work between husbands and wives.

While many researchers suggest that relational conflict has adverse performance effects in family firms, the exact mechanisms through which conflict harms performance are rarely empirically investigated. This paper explores the role of family social capital in the relationship between relational conflict and family firm performance. We hypothesize that the negative relationship between relational conflict and family firm performance is partially mediated by family social capital, while family ownership moderates the relationship between relational conflict and family social capital. In a sample of 175 U.S.-based small and medium-sized family firms recruited through Prolific Academic, we find that relational conflict harms firm performance indirectly through the erosion of family social capital. However, no evidence of a direct negative effect of relational conflict on performance is found. Our results also indicate that the negative relationship between relational conflict and family social capital is intensified by family ownership. We discuss the implications and contributions and present relevant directions for future research.

Using labor force survey (LFS) data collected before and during the COVID-19 lockdowns in the Philippines, we showed that hard lockdowns had a larger negative impact on the employment of women who had minor children compared to women who did not have minor children. Among Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines was among the hardest-hit by the pandemic, in terms of both the number of infected and its economic toll. The large economic toll was partly attributable to the extreme and militarized lockdown imposed at the onset of the pandemic in the country's three most populous and economically-important regions, namely Metro Manila, Calabarzon, and Central Luzon. Using difference-in-differences analysis on pooled LFS data, we showed that female household heads or spouses with children were significantly less likely to have paid employment during the hard lockdown compared to female household heads or spouses without children, even after controlling for important covariates. Among women with children, the employment losses were larger for women with two or more children, suggesting a lockdown-induced parenthood penalty for women in the labor market. This was due in part to the increased care responsibilities disproportionately shouldered by mothers during hard lockdowns, given that children were forced to be at home and do distance learning.

Using a sample of 18,201 observations of working age respondents drawn from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, 1996-2018, this research examined the labor supply effects for younger family members of living with older persons needing assistance with activities of daily living. We report the effects for three labor supply outcomes of younger family members: working hours, full-time work, and occupational flexibility of working hours. Our results indicate that living with an older family member needing assistance significantly reduced younger women's working hours and the probability of working full-time among younger women, but increased both of these labor outcomes among younger men. In addition, living with an older family member needing help led younger women to work in occupations with significantly larger average variances in working hours. This suggests that these women occupied positions that allowed greater flexibility of working hours. We found little effect on flexibility of working hours for younger men. We conclude that the need for assistance among older family members has important effects on the labor market outcomes of younger family members.

By adopting a dyadic extension of the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), this study examined whether perceived economic uncertainty affects fertility intentions. Three-hundred thirty one heterosexual couples living in Italy participated in a randomized between-group experimental study, in which we manipulated perceived economic uncertainty (low vs. high vs. control). The participants subsequently completed a questionnaire measuring their attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and fertility intentions. We employed Structural Equation Modelling in estimating the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. The model showed a good fit to the data. Women's attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control were influenced by the high economic uncertain scenario, whereas among men these variables were affected only by the positive economic scenario. Attitudes and perceived behavioral control were significant predictors of fertility intentions for both sexes. Significant partner effects were observed as well. These findings suggest that fertility plans should be examined by adopting a dyadic perspective, as individuals' intentions are affected not only by their own beliefs, but also by those of their partners.

Basic financial services facilitate people's ability to manage their finances, save, and receive payments from employers or the government. Drawing on survey data as well as qualitative interviews with 80 mothers with limited incomes, we find that parents take a pragmatic view and use a wide range of financial services to meet their needs including fintech, prepaid cards, and mobile phone-based solutions, as well as traditional banks. Mistrust in institutions is an important factor in shaping the services mothers avoid. Structural factors, like employers' payment methods, also play a role in financial service use. These low-income parents of young children are actively using a range of financial services, much broader than those provided by traditional banks. Many mothers engaged in complex financial management practices to receive income and pay their bills. This opens room for potentially costly errors and is, at least, taxing their cognitive bandwidth. Researchers must attend to the diverse set of financial services with which parents engage and investigate how this affects families' financial wellbeing and inclusion.

Guided by the family adjustment and adaptation response (FAAR) model and using a panel survey of 1510 adults in the US administered during the summer of 2020 and a mixed methods approach, we explored associations between changes in financial stress related to COVID-19 and relational wellbeing. Regression analyses showed that, compared to those who maintained their levels of financial stress, those who reported increased financial stress reported increased conflict and those who reported decreased financial stress reported decreased conflict. However, decreased financial stress was also associated with decreases in emotional closeness and relationship happiness, suggesting that changes in financial stress can lead to both and in families. Qualitative findings provide insights into factors that may exacerbate or help alleviate financial stress related to COVID-19.

Financial capability, the combination of financial literacy (ability to act) and financial access (opportunity to act), improves people's access to resources, and thus has the potential to improve health and well-being. This paper positions financial capability under the framework of social determinants of health and discusses theory and presents empirical evidence on the link between financial capability and health. Using data from the RAND American Life Panel and the structural equation modeling approach, we distinguish financial capability from the common socioeconomic position indicators such as income and education. We find that financial capability has a positive and longitudinal effect on health, independent of race/ethnicity, gender, income, education, and employment. This study demonstrates that financial capability is an independent social determinant of health. It can be theoretically and conceptually defined, empirically measured, and can inform clinical interventions that may improve population health and well-being. Implications for future research, practice, and policy are discussed.

The research literature on the growing field of consumer financial capability displays a wide diversity of understanding about the meaning and measurement of the concept. While sufficient research literature has been produced for a review of measurement domains and indicators, this work remains undone. The aim of the study is to assess the quantitative peer-reviewed research literature to advance the field toward building an evidence base for financial capability interventions and policies to improve family financial well-being and reduce economic inequality. This scoping review study analyzed the financial capability scholarly literature between 2015 and 2018. Overall, 34 studies used quantitative data and met all inclusion criteria for this study. Findings suggest that financial capability measurement constructs were operationalized in 12 different ways ( = 22). Most commonly, financial capability was operationalized as the combination of objective financial knowledge and financial access. Few studies included measurement of financial socialization or financial well-being. Most studies measured financial access using only formal financial access measures, such as bank account ownership and/or whether the consumer has investments. A smaller number of studies measured both formal and informal access (including use of non-bank financial institutions/products). Half of the articles that included financial access used bank account either solely or in combination with other measures as the indicator(s). Many studies lacked any measure of financial access. Recommendations are made about standardizing measurement for the constructs within financial capability and measurement of financial capability.