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This paper introduces the special issue on race, child welfare, and child well-being. In doing so, I summarize the evidence of racial/ethnic disparities in child well-being after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent findings demonstrate that, compared to white children, black and Latino children are more likely to have experienced poverty and food insufficiency, to have had parents lose their jobs, and to be exposed to distance learning and school closures during the pandemic. I argue that though COVID-19 has indeed worsened racial/ethnic disparities in child well-being, it has also served to place a spotlight on the American welfare state's historical mistreatment of low-income families and black and Latino families in particular. Consider that around three-fourths of black and Latino children facing food insufficiency during the pandemic also experienced food insufficiency prior to the onset of the pandemic. Moving forward, analyses of racial/ethnic disparities in child well-being during the pandemic, I argue, must not only consider the economic shock and high unemployment rates of 2020, but the failure of the American welfare state to adequately support jobless parents, and black and Latino parents in particular, long before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.

This study investigates whether the generosity and accessibility of publicly provided income support contributes to levels of family homelessness. Using data on student homelessness from most public school districts in the United States, I find that greater access to cash assistance from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program reduces levels of family homelessness and that the reduction is particularly strong for majority–Black and Native American school districts. The results suggest that the observed decline in access to TANF cash assistance may be an important driver of the rise in family homelessness. Evidence is inconclusive about whether greater access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or greater generosity of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) reduces levels of homelessness.

Abstract
Black children in the USA are more than twice as likely as white children to live in poverty. While past research has primarily attributed this phenomenon to the family structure of black children, this article investigates how state-level heterogeneity in social assistance programs contributes to the black–white child poverty gap. I find that racial inequities in states' administration of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program contributed to the impoverishment of approximately 256 000 black children per year from 2012–2014. State-year panel data demonstrates that states with larger percentages of black residents are less likely to prioritize the 'provision of cash assistance', but more likely to allocate funds toward the 'discouragement of lone motherhood'. Neutralizing inequities in states' TANF spending priorities would reduce the black–white child poverty gap by up to 15%—comparable to the reduction effect of moving all children in single-mother households to two-parent households.

Routine-biased technological change has emerged as a leading explanation for the differential wage growth of routine occupations, such as manufacturers or office clerks, relative to less routine occupations. Less clear, however, is how the effects of technological advancement on occupational wage trends vary across political-institutional context. This paper investigates the extent to which collective bargaining agreements and union coverage shape the relative wage growth of occupations at higher risk of automation. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study and the U.S. Current Population Survey, I measure the 'routine task intensity' of occupations across 15 OECD Member States and the 50 United States from the 1980s onward. Findings suggest that bargaining coverage is more consequential for the wage growth of high routine occupations relative to less routine occupations, and that high routine occupations lose coverage at a faster rate when bargaining coverage at the national level declines. As a result, declines in bargaining coverage within a country are associated with declining relative wage growth for occupations at higher risk of automation. Estimates suggest that had union coverage in the U.S. not declined from 1984 levels, the earnings of high routine occupations might have grown at the same rate as low pay occupations between 1984 and 2015, rather than experiencing a relative wage decline. However, the findings also suggest that gains in the relative wage growth may increasingly come at the cost of reduced employment shares of high routine occupations.

AbstractCare occupations are gendered and remain relatively poorly paid, particularly in the United States. Prior research on the 'care penalty' primarily points to individual, relational, and market‐valuation factors in explaining the relative earnings of care workers. This study integrates these explanations with a comparative institutional perspective. Using higher‐quality data and methods than previous comparative research in the field—that is, harmonized micro‐data from the Current Population Survey and EU‐SILC from 2005 to 2016, country and year fixed effects models, and a counterfactual analysis—we find that national variance in labour market and welfare state institutions explains most of the difference in the relative earnings of reproductive care workers between the United States and European countries. Higher rates of collective bargaining coverage, stronger employment protection and welfare state spending contribute to higher relative earnings for reproductive care occupations, and lower relative earnings for high‐status nurturant care occupations. Differences in the relative earnings of care workers appear to be mostly a construct of social policy and labour market institutions rather than individual, relational, and market‐valuation factors.

International audience ; Care occupations are strongly gendered and remain relatively poorly paid, particularly in the United States. Prior research points to individual, relational, and market- valuation factors in explaining the relative earnings of care workers. In contrast, this study applies a comparative institutional perspective to investigate cross-national differences in the relative earnings of care workers. Using merged data from the U.S. Current Population Survey and EU-SILC, we find that national variance in labour market and welfare state institutions explains nearly all of the difference in the relative earnings of reproductive care workers between the U.S. and EU. Higher rates of collective bargaining coverage and welfare state spending contribute to higher relative earnings for reproductive care occupations, and lower relative earnings for high-status nurturant care occupations. Differences in the relative earnings of care workers appear to be primarily a construct of social and labour market policies.

Care occupations are strongly gendered and remain relatively poorly paid, particularly in the United States. Prior research points to individual, relational, and market- valuation factors in explaining the relative earnings of care workers. In contrast, this study applies a comparative institutional perspective to investigate cross-national differences in the relative earnings of care workers. Using merged data from the U.S. Current Population Survey and EU-SILC, we find that national variance in labour market and welfare state institutions explains nearly all of the difference in the relative earnings of reproductive care workers between the U.S. and EU. Higher rates of collective bargaining coverage and welfare state spending contribute to higher relative earnings for reproductive care occupations, and lower relative earnings for high-status nurturant care occupations. Differences in the relative earnings of care workers appear to be primarily a construct of social and labour market policies.

Care occupations are strongly gendered and remain relatively poorly paid, particularly in the United States. Prior research points to individual, relational, and market- valuation factors in explaining the relative earnings of care workers. In contrast, this study applies a comparative institutional perspective to investigate cross-national differences in the relative earnings of care workers. Using merged data from the U.S. Current Population Survey and EU-SILC, we find that national variance in labour market and welfare state institutions explains nearly all of the difference in the relative earnings of reproductive care workers between the U.S. and EU. Higher rates of collective bargaining coverage and welfare state spending contribute to higher relative earnings for reproductive care occupations, and lower relative earnings for high-status nurturant care occupations. Differences in the relative earnings of care workers appear to be primarily a construct of social and labour market policies.

Debate around a universal basic income (UBI) tends to focus on the economic and social implications of the policy proposal. Less clear, however, are the factors influencing support for a UBI. Using the 2016 European Social Survey, we investigate how trade union membership and left political ideology (central to power resources theory) and attitudes towards immigrants' access to welfare benefits (central to welfare state chauvinism) affect individual support for a UBI. We also investigate how country-level differences in levels of social spending moderate individual-level UBI support. Results from multi-level models suggest that a broader coalition of UBI supporters can generally be found in countries where social spending is low. Specifically, we find that welfare state chauvinism is more likely to be associated with negative attitudes towards a UBI in countries with high levels of spending, but has only a weak association with UBI support in low-spending countries. Similarly, political ideology is more consequential in explaining UBI support in countries with higher levels of spending. These tensions form a demand–capacity paradox: the countries which are presumably least equipped to implement a UBI see the most broad-based support for the policy.

This paper applies improved household income data to reevaluate the levels, trends, composition, and role of social policy in extreme child poverty in the US from 1997 to 2015. We adjust for benefit underreporting and incorporate the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). This reduces the share of children below $2 per day from 1.8 per cent to 0.1 per cent in 2015. However, survey data omits the 1.3 million homeless children. Unlike prior literature's focus on single motherhood, citizenship status is more consequential to extreme poverty. We also demonstrate that increases in SNAP generosity and take-up enabled declines in three measures of extreme child poverty

This study applies improved household income data to measure and decompose trends in pan-European income inequality from 2006 to 2014. To contrast the relative significance of economic homogeneity versus the efficacy of welfare state and labour market institutions in shaping income distributions, we compare the structure of inequality in the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU-28) to that of the 50 United States. This comparison stands in contrast to the standard practice of evaluating the United States against individual EU Member States. Despite the greater relative heterogeneity of the EU-28 and our corrections for the underreporting of household income in the United States, post-fisc income inequality in the EU-28 remains lower than that of the United States from 2006 onward. Moreover, inequality appears to be rising in the United States, while it has remained stagnant since 2008 in the EU-28. In both unions, and particularly the United States, within-state income differences contribute more to union-wide inequality than between-state differences. In a counterfactual analysis, we find that if the EU-28 matched the between-state homogeneity of the United States, but maintained its relative within-country inequalities, pan-European inequality would fall by only 20 percent. Conversely, inequality in the United States would fall by 34 percent if it matched the within-country inequality of the EU-28. Our findings suggest that the strengthening of egalitarian institutions within the 28 Member States is more consequential than economic convergence in reducing pan-European income inequality. We highlight institutional challenges towards achieving a 'more equal' Europe and discuss implications for future EU policymaking.

BACKGROUND: Understanding how policies lead to changes in health systems and in practice helps policymakers and researchers to intervene more successfully. Yet identifying all the possible changes that occur as a result of a new policy is challenging not only methodologically and logistically, as limited resources are available to conduct indefinite evaluations, but also theoretically, as a complete mapping and attribution of post-hoc changes requires a full understanding of the mechanisms underpinning all change. One option is to identify possible changes across a number of policy impact domains. METHODS: Using a Policy Impact Framework, we brought together data from media, documents and interviews to identify changes to midwifery policy, practice and provision, following the launch of a new global policy initiative, the State of the World's Midwifery (SoWMy 2014) report published in 2014. We used these identified impacts to develop a map of the mechanisms underpinning these changes. RESULTS: SoWMy 2014 contributed to a number of changes at national levels, including increased status of midwifery within national governments, improved curricula and training opportunities for midwives, and improved provision of and access to midwifery-led care. These contributions were attributed to SoWMy 2014 via mechanisms such as stakeholder interaction and acquisition of government support, holding national and international dissemination and training events, and a perceived global momentum around supporting midwifery provision. Policy initiatives of this kind can lead to changes in national and international policy dialogue and practice. We identify factors and mechanisms that are likely to increase the scope and scale of these changes, at contextual, national and global levels. CONCLUSIONS: Identifying changes following a policy using a policy impact framework can help researchers and policymakers understand why policies have the effect they do. This is important information for those wishing to increase the effectiveness of future policies and interventions.