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The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) has made more contributions to the study of income volatility than any other dataset in the United States. Its record of providing data for seminal research is unmatched. In this article, we first present the reasons that the PSID has made such major contributions to research on the topic. Then we review the major papers that have used the PSID to study income volatility, comparing their results to those using other datasets. Last, we present new results for income volatility among U.S. men through 2014, finding that both gross volatility and the variance of transitory shocks display a three-phase trend: upward trends from the 1970s to the 1980s, a stable period in the 1990s through the early 2000s, and a large increase during the Great Recession.

ABSTRACTObjectiveThis study empirically investigates the impact of economic inequality on the cost of living in U.S. metropolitan areas.MethodsUsing a special Census tabulation, a standard cost‐of‐living model is sequentially augmented with measures of poverty and income inequality in a cross‐sectional regression analysis of 90 metropolitan areas; interaction and regional effects are also explored.ResultsHigher costs of living are associated with increasing economic inequality, especially in the distribution of metropolitan income. The effects of household poverty are significant but less consistent.ConclusionsReducing economic inequality would produce benefits enjoyed by all metropolitan residents via lower living costs. The benefits are likely to be greater in large, fast growing areas where income disparities are pronounced.

This paper considers the extent to which the United Kingdom (UK) 2010 social security system meets the costs of a child in a low-income household. The costs of a child are derived from a loneparent and two-parent family budget standard (minimum income standard). The items in the child's basket of goods and services include food, clothing, household goods and services, personal care, transport and cultural and social participation necessities. The costs vary by age and according to whether childcare costs are included. Excluding childcare costs, the cost of a child increases with age, varying between £77 per week for 0- to one-year-olds to £116 per week for a secondary school child. There are some economies of scale for families with more than one child. These estimates are used to assess the modified Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) equivalence scale and the adequacy of the contribution of the state in child benefits and child tax credits. The state contributes only part of the total costs of a child in low-income families, which means that these costs may have to be met out of the adult benefits.

This study illuminates an understudied pathway through which disadvantage is reproduced in the rental housing market: the housing search, application, and tenant screening process. Using in-depth interviews with 25 housing-seekers with criminal conviction records, past evictions, and damaged credit histories, this article examines the direct role of the rental housing search and application process in reproducing economic precarity and social disadvantage among renters with discrediting background records, beyond delimiting their housing options. Its findings suggest that navigating the housing search from a position of acute market disadvantage comes with significant costs for this population, including the financial burden of repeated application fees and the psychological strains associated with the specter of indefinite housing insecurity. The findings also demonstrate how the housing search process may undermine the willingness of stigmatized renters to contest exploitative or unlawful rental practices by reinforcing awareness of their degraded status in the rental market.