Research

February 3, 2022

One in five babies born in U.S. cities is in poor health, with profound and lasting impacts on their own and their mother’s lives.

Researchers reached this conclusion after following nearly 3,700 infants and their mothers through Princeton’s Fragile Families Survey, which checked in on the families six times between the child’s birth and age 15. The survey was fielded in cities with a 200,000-plus population, and the babies’ most common medical conditions were low birth weight, premature birth, and genetic or other abnormalities, such as difficulty breathing.

A body of research on the long-run prospects for children with disadvantages – whether medical or socioeconomic – has established that they have far more problems as adults. Consistent with other prior research, a study by Dara Lee Luca and Purvi Sevak at Mathematica also found an immediate consequence for newborns in poor neonatal health: a greater likelihood of having a disability such as a motor or speech disorder or neurodevelopmental problems such as ADHD and autism.

Within their first year, the infants often qualified for federal cash payments to their mothers under Supplemental Security Income for Children (SSI).

The inordinate amount of time spent caring for babies in poor neonatal health takes an enormous toll on the mothers, the researchers found. While caregiving didn’t seem to impact their mental health, their ability to hold down a job was significantly compromised. The mothers of babies in poor health worked fewer hours, especially when the children were very young, and were more likely to drop out of the labor force entirely. …Learn More

Field Work

February 19, 2019

Social Security remains as vital today as it was after its 1935 passage. But advocates for the nation’s most vulnerable retirees have proposed ways to enhance their benefits.

Consider the minimum benefit. Put on the books in the early 1970s, its goal was to prevent poverty among retirees who had worked for decades in low-paying jobs. The benefit’s value has diminished due to a design flaw that rendered it largely ineffective.

A recent policy brief by the Center for Retirement Research analyzed various modest proposals to increase the minimum benefit and improve low-income retirees’ financial security.

This brief was the last in a series on modernizing Social Security. The relatively low cost of these proposals, many of which have bipartisan support, could be offset by benefit reductions for less-vulnerable retirees. The House of Representatives is planning hearings later this year looking into ways benefits might be enhanced.

The following are synopses of the policy problems and proposals discussed in the other briefs and covered in previous blogs: …Learn More

On the Web

February 12, 2019

Thousands of baby boomers retire every day and sign up for Social Security. Yet the payroll tax that funds their benefits is being levied on a shrinking share of workers’ aggregate earnings.

You might not know this but inequality and growing U.S. trade with China are among the forces that are behind this trend, Gal Wettstein explains in a new podcast about his research for the Center for Retirement Research (CRR).

This is the latest in a series of podcast interviews in which CRR researchers talk about their work on issues related to work, aging, and retirement. The podcasts are hosted by yours truly.

Others explore how motherhood reduces women’s Social Security benefits, the limited impact of cognitive decline on older workers, and the disparate impact of the same retirement age on different types of workers.

The podcasts – “CRR essentials” – are available in iTunes and online on the Center’s website. …Learn More

Field Work

January 10, 2019

Created in the 1930s, Social Security’s spousal benefit – it’s half of a retired husband’s benefit – was the way to compensate housewives for the work of raising children.

The world has changed, but Social Security hasn’t been modified to reflect the rise of the full-time, working mother.

Today, married women frequently have earned enough to collect Social Security based on their own employment histories, rather than a spousal benefit. The problem comes when their earnings are reduced – and ultimately their Social Security benefits – because they disrupted their career paths and sacrificed pay raises to care for their children.

Single motherhood has also become very common, which means that a wide swath of women have no access to spousal and survivor benefits at all. Due to a higher divorce rate, one in four first marriages don’t last the full 10 years that Social Security requires to qualify for these benefits.

The erosion of spousal benefits points to a future in which “large numbers of women are going to move through retirement with more disadvantages” than previous generations, concludes a recent report by the Center for Retirement Research.

This problem could be addressed if Social Security gave credit to parents for caregiving. Caregiver credits are already pervasive in Europe, including Austria, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and they take various forms.

In this country, policy experts have proposed two different approaches to help parents with children under age six by increasing the earnings that dictate the size of their benefit checks. …Learn More