Abstract
This article tests four models of how parental and childhood welfare use affects sons' labor supply: the correlated disadvantages model, Wilson's structural-environmental model, Mead's welfare culture model, and Murray's incentives model. Past research is extended by including measures of all seven factors that these models predict will shape sons' labor supply: parental welfare use, neighborhood welfare use, parental income, family noneconomic resources, neighborhood resources, labor market conditions, and state welfare benefits. There are four main findings. First, welfare use in the childhood neighborhood has no effects on sons' work hours. Second, only one group of sons is affected by parental welfare use: black sons' whose parents average $7,500 or more in welfare income per year. Third, black sons' adult work hours are strongly predicted by parental poverty and by labor market conditions; together these account for half the estimated relationships between heavy parental welfare use and black sons' labor supply. Fourth, parents' and neighbors' work hours strongly predict nonblack sons' labor supply.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, M. (1978).Welfare: The political economy of welfare reform. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.
Bernstein, B. (1982).The politics of welfare: The New York City experience. Boston: Abt Books.
Brooks-Gunn, J., Duncan, G. J., Klebanov, P. K., & Sealand, N. (1993). Do neighborhoods influence child and adolescent development?American Journal of Sociology 99, 353–395.
Corcoran, M., Gordon, R., Laren, D., & Solon, G. (1992). The association between men's economic status and their family and community origins.Journal of Human Resources, 27, 575–601.
Duncan, G. J., & Yeung, W. J. (1994).Extent and consequences of welfare dependence among America's children. Unpublished manuscript. Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research.
Ellwood, D. T. (1988).Poor support, poverty and the American family. New York: Basic Books.
Haveman, R., & Wolfe, B. (1994).The determinants of economic inactivity. Unpublished manuscript. Madison: University of Wisconsin, Department of Economics.
Haveman, R., Wolfe, B., & Spaulding, J. (1991). Childhood events and circumstances influencing high school completion.Demography, 28, 133–157.
Hill, M. A., & O'Neill, J. (1993).Underclass behaviors in the United States: Measurement and analysis of determinants. Unpublished manuscript. New York: Center for the Study of Business and Government, Baruch College.
Hill, M. S., & Ponza, M. (1983).Intergenerational transmission of dependence: Does welfare dependency beget dependency? Paper presented at Southern Economic Association meetings, Washington, DC.
Jencks, C., & Peterson, P. E. (Eds.) (1991).The urban underclass. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Lerman, R. (1986). Do welfare programs affect the schooling and work patterns of young black men? In R. Freeman and H. Holzer (Eds.),The black youth employment problem (pp. 403–438). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lillard, L. A. & Willis, R. J. (1978). Dynamic aspects of earnings mobility.Econometrica, 46, 985–1012.
Massey, D. S. (1990). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the American underclass.American Journal of Sociology, 96, 329–357.
Massey, D. S., & Eggers, M. L. (1990). The ecology of inequality: Minorities and the concentration of poverty, 1970–1980.American Journal of Sociology, 95, 1153–1188.
Mead, L. M. (1986).Beyond entitlement: The social obligations of citizenship. New York: Free Press.
Mead, L. M. (1992).The new politics of poverty: The nonworking poor in America. New York: Basic Books.
Murray, C. (1984).Losing ground: American social policy, 1950–1980. New York: Basic Books.
Solon, G. (1992). Intergenerational income mobility in the United States.American Economic Review, 82, 393–408.
Solon, G., Corcoran, M., Gordon, R., & Laren, D. (1991). A longitudinal analysis of sibling correlations in economic status.Journal of Human Resources 26, 509–534.
Wilson, W. J. (1987).The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, W. J. (1991a). Public policy research and “the truly disadvantaged”. In C. Jencks and P. E. Peterson (Eds.),The urban underclass. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Wilson W. J. (1991b). Studying inner-city social dislocations: The challege of public agenda research.American Sociological Review, 56, 1–14.
Wilson, W. J. (1993).The new urban poverty and the problem of race: The Tanner Lecture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was supported by Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Department of Health and Human Services, by the Rockefeller Foundation, and by the Office of the Vice-President for Research at the University of Michigan. We are grateful to John Bound, Sheldon Danziger, Greg Duncan, Martha Hill, and an anoymous reviewer for helpful comments and advice, to Marguerite Grabarek and James Kunz for programming, and most of all to Wendy Niemi for her patient, accurate, and efficient typing.
Her research interests include poverty, social stratification, and labor economics.
His research interests include rural poverty, poverty neighborhoods, and intergenerational poverty.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Corcoran, M., Adams, T. Family and neighborhood welfare dependency and sons' labor supply. J Fam Econ Iss 16, 239–264 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02353710
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02353710