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.
Zippay
Allison
A
School of Social Work, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, 536 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08903, USA. zippay@rci.rutgers.edu
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