County Characteristics and Poverty Spell LengthAndrew Grodner, John A. Bishop and Thomas J. Kniesner () Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), 2007, vol. 53, issue 1, pages 19-44 Abstract: Our research examines how individual and community factors influence the average length of poverty spells. We measure local economic conditions by the county unemployment rate and neighborhood spillover effects by the racial makeup and poverty rate of the county. We find that moving an individual from one standard deviation above the mean poverty rate to one standard deviation below the mean poverty rate (from the inner city to the suburbs) lowers the average poverty spell by 20–25 percent; this is equal in magnitude to the effect of changing the household head from female to male. Finally, we find that when we control for the demographic, human capital, and county level effects the conditional effect for high school graduates is only two months (85 percent smaller than the unconditional effect), black poverty spells are about eight months (half of the unconditional effect), and female headed households increase length of spells by about eight months (80 percent of the unconditional effect). Keywords: income mobility; poverty; neighborhood effect; PSID (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik) is edited by Christian Wey and Klaus F. Zimmermann More articles in Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik) from Duncker & Humblot, Berlin |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
Econpapers is hosted by the
Swedish Business School at Örebro University.