Dynamics of income packaging: a 10-year longitudinal study.
This article examines the methods and dynamics of packaging multiple sources of wage and nonwage income as a means of making ends meet over a 10-year period among a sample of displaced steelworkers who lost jobs as a result of plant closings in the 1980s and then experienced extensive downward mobility. The study tracked changes in the respondents' income and employment over a decade, the dynamics of their use of social services, their pooling of a variety of income sources, and the use of social assistance to supplement low wages. The study found that among this sample income packaging was a universal economic strategy and that use of social services did not affect later employment and earnings.
School of Social Work, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, 536 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08903, USA. zippay@rci.rutgers.edu
Allison
A
Zippay
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D004651:Employment; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010414:Pennsylvania; D011203:Poverty; D011632:Public Assistance / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012946:Social Welfare