 The Importance of Non-labor Income: An Analysis of Socioeconomic Performance in Western Counties by Type of Non-labor IncomeMegan M. Lawson, Ray Rasker and Patricia H. Gude Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, 2014, vol. 44, issue 2 Abstract: Non-labor income (NLI) is one of the largest and fastest growing sources of income, constituting more than one-third of personal income in the U.S. West. Given the unprecedent-ed growth in NLI and its diverse make-up, which includes investment income, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and welfare, it is worth asking what effect the different types of NLI have on local economies and social well-being. We classify NLI into payments associated with investments, aging, and economic hardship, and then we use an empirical approach to evalu-ate the relationships between these NLI types and socioeconomic performance in western counties. We find that the NLI types accruing in the West are concentrated in rural counties and are associated with predictable, and in many cases undesirable, socioeconomic character-istics. Policies and demographic trends that affect the disbursement of NLI (e.g., aging baby boomers and reforms to retirement, income maintenance, and medical benefits) will have widespread effects, particularly in the rural West. Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Consumer/Household Economics; Financial Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:jrapmc:243973 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy from Mid-Continent Regional Science Association Contact information at EDIRC. |
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
School of Business at Örebro University.