Racial differences in the relationship between the receipt of informal financial support and social insurance

Dania V. Francis, Christian E. Weller, Emek Karakilic and Maryam Salihu

Review of Social Economy, 2024, vol. 82, issue 2, 184-212

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the relationship between the reliance on informal financial support and social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance to meet financial hardships imposed during the economic downturn associated with COVID-19. We use the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey to compare the likelihood of receiving informal financial support from family and friends for households that did or did not receive social insurance controlling for observable household characteristics. We pay special attention to differences by race/ethnicity and by homeownership – a proxy for wealth. Our results suggest that (1) some types of social insurance receipt are a weak substitute for informal financial support, (2) the substitution between informal financial support and social insurance receipt is stronger among White households than households of color, and (3) wealth is a more consistent buffer against financial hardship than social insurance receipt.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00346764.2023.2241431 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:82:y:2024:i:2:p:184-212

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RRSE20

DOI: 10.1080/00346764.2023.2241431

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Social Economy is currently edited by Wilfred Dolfsma and John Davis

More articles in Review of Social Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().