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Objective: To examine the distributional effects of the 2008 recession and subsequent recovery across generational cohorts., Methods: Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (2007-2016), we constructed a measure of economic well-being accounting for income, household size, and annuitized value of assets. We examine trajectories of adjusted income and inequality, using Gini coefficients and income shares by decile, for the overall population and by cohort during the recession and recovery., Results: Inequality declined temporarily during the recession, but reached new highs during the recovery. During recovery, population-level increases in economic resources were not reflected among below-median households, as the more concentrated financial assets rose while broader-based home equity and employment fell or remained stagnant. Inequality measures increased for cohorts in their primary working years (Generation-X and Baby Boomers), but not among the younger Millennials, who were at early stages of education, workforce entry, and household formation., Discussion: The study illustrates an integrative approach to analyzing cumulative dis/advantage by considering interactions between historically consistent macrolevel events, such as economic shocks or policy choices affecting all cohorts, and the persistent life-course processes that tend to increase heterogeneity and inequality as cohorts age over time. Although recovery policies led to rapid recovery of financial asset values, they did not proportionately reach those below the median or their economic resource types. Results suggest that in a high-inequality environment, recovery policies from economic shocks may need tailoring to all levels of resources in order to achieve more equitable recovery outcomes and prevent exacerbating cohort inequality trajectories., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The centrality of home equity to the balance sheets of American households, and the oppressive legacy of racial exclusion from mortgage markets, compel the design of intentionally anti-racist housing policy capable of building lasting wealth for Black families. In this study, we compare the home-mortgage terms offered to middle-income Whites in the New Deal era, with a contemporary New York City policy offered in formerly redlined districts. The city's Housing Development Fund Corporation policy is for limited-income households but does not limit down payments nor qualify for federal home loans. Using mined listing data and the 2017 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find more than 80% of income-eligible urban Black households lack the wealth to purchase the median listing, versus 51% of Whites. Moreover, the policy's market exclusions preclude access to what is now substantial accumulated equity. Unit owners face wide-scale housing-code violations and property seizure, highlighting the limitations of "limited equity" ownership, which counteracts wealth creation. We draw two primary lessons. First, anti-racist policy cannot demand substantial financial assets. Second, financing schemes for building improvement or climate-responsive adaptation, in addition to initial purchase, should be well-tailored to family budgets and designed to deliver equity to the formerly excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicaid provides virtually no-cost coverage to millions of low-income Americans. This study examines whether its beneficiaries realize similar health care access as their counterparts with private insurance. We draw on the 2014–2017 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and control for observable confounding factors across coverage types by estimating and applying entropy weights. Medicaid beneficiaries were moderately more likely to report a usual source of care (74.5% vs 68.1%, p<.01) and approximately equally as likely to report a checkup in the past year as the privately insured (43.5% vs 44.5%, p>.1), each significantly more likely than the uninsured. Medicaid beneficiaries had significantly more prescription fills (12.6 vs 8.2) and emergency-care visits (.26 vs.15) annually than the privately-insured on average, with similar numbers of physician visits. On balance, we did not find evidence that Medicaid was associated with diminished access or utilization relative to private insurance, while both had more access than the uninsured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. To evaluate the effect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansions on national rates of home eviction and eviction initiation in the United States. Methods. Using nationally representative administrative data from The Eviction Lab at Princeton University, we estimated the effects of the ACA Medicaid expansions on county-level evictions and filings from 2000 to 2016 with a difference-in-difference regression design. Results. We found that Medicaid expansions were associated with an annual reduction in the rate of evictions by 1.15 per 1000 renter-occupied households (P <.001), a reduction of 1.59 eviction filings per 1000 renter-occupied households (P <.001), and a reduction in the average number of evictions by 46 (P <.05). We found additional evidence that increasing rates of African American residents in a county was associated with a greater rate of evictions filed, and increased rates of poverty and rent burdens relative to income were associated with more evictions both filed and completed. Conclusions. Evictions decreased after Medicaid expansion, demonstrating further evidence of the substantive financial protections afforded by this coverage. The reduction in the eviction filing rate suggests that Medicaid expansion could be reducing evictions by preventing the court proceeding entirely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out-of-pocket Spending on health care pushed over 10.5 million Americans into poverty in 2016. Medicaid helps offset this risk by providing medical coverage to millions of poor and near-poor children and adults and thereby constraining out-of-pocket medical spending. This article examines whether recent state-level expansions to the Medicaid program resulted in reductions in poverty and whether future changes to the program are likely to have similar impacts on poverty. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we found that the recent Medicaid expansion caused a significant reduction in the poverty rate. Moreover, by simulating a counterfactual poverty rate for a hypothetical world without Medicaid coverage, we found that the program's antipoverty impact grew over the past decade independent of expansion, by shielding beneficiaries from growing out-of-pocket spending. Future expansions or retractions of Medicaid are likely to produce associated effects on poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]