Volume 24, Number 1 (Winter) 1989
Mayer, Susan E. and Christopher Jencks. 1989. "Poverty and the Distribution of Material Hardship." Journal of Human Resources 24(1):88-114.
Public concern with property derives in large part from the assumption that low income families cannot afford necessities. yet official poverty statistics focus on measuring income, not on measuring material hardship.
Two surveys of Chicago residents measure whether families could afford food, housing and medical care. A family's official income-to-needs ratio explained 24 percent of the variance in the amount of material hardship it reported. Adjustments for family size, age, health, noncash benefits, home ownership, and access to credit explain another 15 percent. Variations in permanent income explain almost none of the remaining variance in hardship. Among families with the same official income-to-needs ratio, material hardship varies by age, family size, and composition.
The authors are at the center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University. Support for this project was provided through the Chicago Community Trust by the Trust itself and by Amoco Foundation, Arthur Anderson and Co., the Borg-Warner Foundation, Commonwealth Edison Company, Continental Bank, Dart and Kraft Foundation, First National Bank of Chicago, Illinois Bell Telephone Company, Jewel Companies, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the prince Charitable Trust, Sears Roebuck and Company, United Way of Chicago, Walter E. Heller International Corporation, and the Woods Charitable Fund. The survey of Chicago residents was directed by Fay Lomax Cook and Christopher Jencks. Greg Duncan, Susan Popkins, Larry Radbill, Arthur Stinchcombe, and Christopher Winship provided helpful comments on earlier drafts.
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