For younger adults, unemployment may triple the risk of depression, By Karen Kaplan, March 19, 2015, Los Angeles Times: “Unemployment isn’t just bad for your bank account. It can also do serious damage to mental health – especially for younger adults who are just starting out in life, new research shows. Nearly 12% of Americans between ages 18 and 25 were deemed to be depressed based on their answers to eight questions that were part of a survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments. But within this age group, those who were unemployed were 3.17 times more likely to be depressed than their counterparts with jobs…”
Day: March 20, 2015
SNAP and Employment
Illinois among states to test ways to send food stamp recipients to work, By Mary Clare Jalonick, March 20, 2015, Chicago Sun-Times: “Ten states will test new ways to get food stamp recipients back to work, using Agriculture Department grants aimed at helping some of the 46 million Americans who receive benefits move off the rolls. The grants come as the Republican Congress is exploring ways to cut the program, which cost $74 billion last year — twice its cost in 2008. Some in the GOP have proposed stricter work requirements as a way to do that…”
Racial Income Gap
- Minority families struggle to break out of poverty, study finds, By Tiffany Hsu, March 17, 2015, Los Angeles Times: “A generation from now, minority workers are expected to make up the majority of the American workforce. But today, their families are far more likely to be poor than their white counterparts, according to an analysis of Census data released Monday. The study, by the Working Poor Families Project, showed that working poor families are three times more likely to be headed by a minority parent…”
- Black and Latino working families are twice as likely as others to be low-income, By Michael A. Fletcher, March 16, 2015, Washington Post: “As the U.S. economy has picked up again after the recession, it’s become clear that some Americans are getting a bigger share of the recovery than others. A new report released Monday by the Working Families Project, a national initiative that pushes state governments to adopt family friendly policies, shows that black and Hispanic working families are twice as likely as those headed by whites and Asians to be poor or low-income—a gap that has widened since the recession…”
- Working Poor Families Project report highlights more disparities for Wisconsin minorities, By Pat Schneider, March 17, 2015, Capital Times: “Another report is delineating a stark racial and ethnic divide in Wisconsin, this one focusing on low-income working families. And without significant policy changes, the gap will continue to grow, affecting the long-term vitality of the economy, researchers predict. The new report by the Working Poor Families Projectfound that 61 percent of minority working families in the state are low-income, compared to 22 percent of white working families who are low-income. Some 64 percent of all black working families fall into the low-income category, as do 72 percent of all Latino working families…”