This article builds upon classic economic perspectives of financial behavior by applying the narrative identity perspective of cultural sociology to explain how lower-income families respond to indebtedness. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 194 lower-income household heads, we...

We build on the robust quantitative literature on behavioral responses to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) by using in‐depth qualitative interviews with 115 EITC recipients to examine how they understand and respond to its incentive structures regarding earnings, marriage, and childbearing....

Theories of family functioning suggest that childbearing with multiple partners may increase parenting stress due to changes in social and economic resources and the challenges associated with parenting across multiple households. These family processes may not be equally stressful for mothers...

The remarkable transformation of the American social safety net that began in the early 1990s has led to seismic shifts in who benefits and how. More than two decades later, how should these changes be judged? Expanding and updating prior influential reviews, we evaluate how the transformation...

This book chronicles the impact of the sweeping transformation of the social safety net that occurred in the mid-1990s. With the dramatic expansion of tax credits--a combination of the Earned Income Tax Credit and other refunds--the economic fortunes of the working poor have been bolstered as...

Fatherhood has traditionally been viewed as part of a package deal, where a father’s relationship with his child is contingent upon his relationship with the mother. We evaluate the accuracy of this hypothesis in light of the high rates of multiple-partnered fertility among unmarried parents...

Fatherhood has traditionally been viewed as part of a package deal, where a father’s relationship with his child is contingent upon his relationship with the mother. We evaluate the accuracy of this hypothesis in light of the high rates of multiple-partnered fertility among unmarried parents...