Achievement

HOUSE OF CARDS: THE NEW SAFETY NET. New research suggests that as the public safety net for low-income American families has eroded in recent decades, families have become increasingly economically insecure. Despite the importance of these changes to inequality and cumulative disadvantage, social scientists have devoted little attention to economic coping strategies when families experience financial shocks in this new welfare state. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 193 low-income families, Trainee Sara Sternberg Greene finds that the debt-inducing private safety net of credit cards has become the most common coping mechanism for weathering financial shocks. While in the short-term credit cards provide an important function in preventing families from spiraling into financial despair, in the long term families are transitioning from having to navigate the institutions associated with public benefits to those associated with collection agencies, lawyers, courts, and bankruptcy.