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Alternatively, a wealthy person may not have paid the full amount of the rent or mortgage last month because he or she chose to spend the money on luxury goods instead. This person may not be experiencing a hardship in the same way as someone who did not pay the rent because he or she could not afford to. This, again, underscores the importance of question wording in the surveys. The method used in this report expands on the notion of material hardships, which we refer to here as “critical” hardships, by looking as well at a broader array of “serious” hardships. Critical hardships explain the extent to which families fail to meet their basic needs for survival. In comparison, serious hardships explain the extent to which families lack the goods, services, and financial ability to maintain employment and a stable, healthy home environment. The concept of serious hardships includes lack of access to regular and preventive medical care, low-quality and insufficient-quality child care, the inability to pay housing bills, and unreliable transportation. 7 The method used here for choosing variables that measure critical hardships involved looking to previous literature on material hardship. The critical hardship measures we use come from existing research on basic needs and material hardship (Beverly 2000; Bauman 1998; Mayer and Jencks 1989). These variables measure the extent to which households go without the very basic necessities: food, housing, and health care. We selected those questions that have been tested for validity in terms of their measure of hardship; those that, to the extent possible, were objective measures of hardship; and those that measured material rather than financial hardship. This last criteria was due to the fact that we wanted the critical hardship measures to demonstrate the extent to which households experience material deprivation, not the extent to which they are having financial difficulties. The serious hardship measures used here are new to the hardship literature, so we created our own method in selecting these measures. The selection process was similar to the selection of critical measures in the sense that it required objective measures. For these measures we focused on financial hardship rather than material hardship, because we wanted to determine the extent to which households are having trouble meeting their needs even though they may or may not actually experience material deprivation. In addition, we searched for variables that would measure the stability and health of the household. As with critical hardships, we relied for these variables on external criteria of how the measure affected health and stability. 2.2 Hardship indicators 2.2.1 Data and sample Hardships fall under four broad categories: food insecurity, insufficient access to health care, housing problems, and inadequate child care. To understand whether or not families are living with hardships, it is necessary to know whether basic needs under these categories are being met. This requires the use of surveys with detailed questions about how families meet their basic needs. Given the
specific and invasive nature of the questions, the primary difficulty with measuring hardships is the availability and consistency of appropriate data. There are two national surveys that ask questions about family hardships— the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the National Survey of American Families (NSAF). These surveys ask families questions about whether they “go without” and experience material deprivation. This report uses both the SIPP and the NSAF in its analysis. The questions asked in the two surveys are not identical, but the use of both surveys allows an expansion of the measures of hardship. Table 6 presents the questions selected from the two datasets. (See Appendix C for a detailed description of the data. A complete analysis of these issues can be found in Gundersen and Boushey 2001.) While the SIPP and NSAF have their strengths and weaknesses, the nature and structure of the NSAF makes it a better survey from which to study hardships. The SIPP is a panel dataset focused on income, employment, and participation in government programs. The hardship questions are the last set of questions asked in the last month of the panel. As with all panel datasets, attrition is a problem in the SIPP. Since attrition tends to occur among low-income respondents, and these respondents are more likely to experience hardship, the SIPP measures may underestimate the extent of hardship. The NSAF, on the other hand, is a cross-sectional survey of the experiences of families that focuses on a number of hardships and family-stress indicators. The cross-sectional nature of this survey eliminates attrition bias. Additionally, the NSAF survey focuses exclusively on well-being, perhaps prompting respondents to give more thoughtful or detailed answers to hardship questions. Given the NSAF’s advantages in this regard, we focus on those results. The SIPP results are presented in the tables in order to demonstrate the similarity of the results across measures of hardship. Unfortunately, data constraints prevent us from matching basic family budgets directly to the NSAF data. 8 Further, our family budgets were tabulated only for six family types, covering only a small proportion of the total U.S. population. In order to generate a large-enough sample to estimate hardships reliably, we use 200% of poverty instead of family budgets for the analysis of hardships. In the previous section, we documented that family budgets correspond closely with 200% of the poverty level: 87% of families living below family budget levels also live below 200% of poverty. Further, using the Current Population Survey, we found that the proportion of families below the family budget level in the nation as a whole closely corresponds to the proportion below 200% of poverty: 28.9% of families fall below basic family budgets, while 28.4% of families fall below 200% of poverty. We also found that the proportion of families experiencing particular hardships was similar using the two thresholds. (See Appendix D.) Thus, the 200%-of-poverty threshold is a good approximation of basic family budgets for use in the hardship analysis. Our sample for the analysis of hardships is individuals in families with positive income that are headed by an adult age 18-64. 9 These households may
Page 1 and 2: HARDSHIPS IN AMERICA The Real Story
Page 3 and 4: Table of contents Executive Summary
Page 5 and 6: Hardships in America 1 Executive su
Page 7 and 8: Hardships in America 3 Introduction
Page 9 and 10: Hardships in America 5 Chapter 1 Fa
Page 11 and 12: Hardships in America 7 measures (Sh
Page 13 and 14: Hardships in America 9 prepared at
Page 15 and 16: Hardships in America 11 poverty lin
Page 17 and 18: Hardships in America 13 TABLE 3 Sha
Page 19 and 20: Hardships in America 15 compared to
Page 21 and 22: Hardships in America 17 TABLE 5 (co
Page 23: Hardships in America 19 Chapter 2 T
Page 27 and 28: Hardships in America 23 TABLE 6 (co
Page 29 and 30: Hardships in America 25 2.3.3 Insuf
Page 31 and 32: Hardships in America 27 and SIPP),
Page 33 and 34: Hardships in America 29 TABLE 7 Pro
Page 35 and 36: Hardships in America 31 TABLE 9 Pro
Page 37 and 38: Hardships in America 33 white famil
Page 39 and 40: Hardships in America 35 TABLE 11 Pr
Page 41 and 42: Hardships in America 37 more immedi
Page 43 and 44: Hardships in America 39 FIGURE D He
Page 45 and 46: Hardships in America 41 hardship. E
Page 47 and 48: Hardships in America 43 · Pay equi
Page 49 and 50: Hardships in America 45 of eligible
Page 51 and 52: Hardships in America 47 income fami
Page 53 and 54: Hardships in America 49 Conclusion
Page 55 and 56: Hardships in America 51 When the st
Page 57 and 58: Hardships in America 53 wages, and
Page 59 and 60: Hardships in America 55 share resou
Page 61 and 62: Hardships in America 57 the core wa
Page 63 and 64: Hardships in America 59 person or f
Page 65 and 66: Hardships in America 61 TABLE A2.1
Page 67 and 68: Hardships in America 63 necessary m
Page 69 and 70: Hardships in America 65 TABLE A3.2
Page 71 and 72: Hardships in America 67 Appendix F
Page 73 and 74: Hardships in America 69 10. Tests o
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Hardships in America 71 Citro, Cons
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TABLE A4.1 Basic family budgets for
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Across the country, millions of ful
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