Some highlights from the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis review of 2019 ACS data:
* Oregon’s median income now stands 2 percent higher than the U.S.
* Oregon’s 11.4 percent poverty rate in 2019 is lower than the nation’s 12.3 percent.
* The racial poverty gap is now the smallest on record in Oregon
See the full post for graphs and further details.
On December 13, the City Club of Eugene hosted a forum on asset poverty and invited me to give a presentation.
Continue readingSeveral new stories in the media and an academic paper provide rationale for examining child care costs for our (1) Oregon Poverty Measure and (2) Paid parental leave projects.
Hotz, V. J., & Wiswall, M. (2019). Child Care and Child Care Policy: Existing Policies, Their Effects, and Reforms. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 686(1), 310–338. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716219884078
Update [October 15, 2020]: This link is now longer valid. I assume the story has been removed.
Recent post by Oregon Employment Department counters commonly held notion that tourism replaced the timber industry in Bend and surrounding area.
These ‘moving bubbles charts’ have caught my attention.
Most recently, I found this one from the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP) that shows family structure, number of children and age across a number of countries. (see bottom of page)
The GGP plot cites this Nathan Yau piece from Flowing Data A Day in the Life: Work and Home.
And one of the first I’ve seen was from CBPP showing SNAP churn, Most SNAP Participants Move In and Out of Work: An Animated Look.
I expect this type of visualization will be helpful as we consider program dynamics (entry and exit) from Oregon’s Self-Sufficiency programs.
A new research report from the Carsey School of Public Policy uses the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) to examine five government programs combined— Social Security, disability benefits, federal and state cash assistance, the EITC, and SNAP. The report finds that these programs keep 11.5 percent of rural and 7.6 percent of urban residents out of poverty.
In the fall 2018, Governor Kate Brown’s office released a report titled The Children’s Agenda: Pathways Out of Poverty for Children to Achieve their Full Potential. The core components of this agenda include:
1. Ending child homelessness
2. Ensure 100 percent healthcare coverage
3. Integrate substance abuse and behavioral health
4. Increase quality of affordable childcare
5. Provide preschool for kids in poverty
6. Lower class sizes and implement longer school years
7. Training and apprenticeships for parents
8. Finalize comprehensive child welfare system based on positive human development
I recently presented research at the 23rd Society for Social Work and Research Conference in San Francisco. With Tim Ottusch and Katie Cherney, we analyzed the increase in student loan debt over time and the relationship with financial insecurity, defined as negative net worth (total assets > total debts). The focus was on young adults age 25-45. Additionally, we considered 3 counterfactual scenarios: (1) financial insecurity under conditions of zero student debt, (2) financial insecurity under student debt levels held constant at 1995 levels, (3) financial insecurity in 2016 under student debt levels held by Canadians. Below is one of the main figures. On the vertical axis is rate of financial insecurity (negative net worth) over time (x axis). The black line displays the observed increase over time. The orange line is the counterfactual scenario of what financial insecurity would be if student loans were eliminated, with other components of net worth left unchanged. The takeaway is the student loan debt explains much more of financial insecurity today than they did twenty years ago.
See full slides here.
This was part of a symposium I analyzed Financial Well-Being across the Life Course.
Over the years I’ve compiled resources to help graduate students succeed. I’ve come across several more recent posts that provide new and different resources. I include them here as a list of resources to avoid searching for them every time. More recent posts appear first.
Amanda Agan compiled list of resources for writing, presenting, and reviewing: here.
The Twitter thread compiled by Mathew E. Hauer will help you learn the basics of open-access and reproducible research (full list here). Even if you are not ready to make the jump to R, the philosophy is the future of social science.
How to write paragraphs. From the LSE Impact blog
Study, productivity, and self-care tips from Claire Kamp Dush:
How to tell the policy narrative, by my OSU colleague Michael Jones:
Identify scholars who have given this considerable thought. Chris Blattman (see professional Advice section) and Raul Pacheco-Vega come to mind. Raul’s posts the dissertation two pager will help most students focus on the essentials.
Last but not least, you should have a hobby or two.
Some resources by Hugh Kearns and Maria Gardiner (via Megan McClelland) on the 7 Secrets of successful grad students. Kearns.Gardiner.2011.7Secrets, Kearns.Gardiner.2011.Advisor, Kearns.Gardiner.2011.Motivation.
I intend to update this page with other resources. Let me know if you have others I should add or if the links are broken.
Here we post the Stata code and results for the talk “What’s behind Oregon’s rising rural child poverty? Changing economies and families.” delivered at the 2017 Oregon Parenting Education Collaborative Conference.