Families Across the Income Spectrum: A Decade in Review

Abstract

During the past decade, scholars continued to focus on how larger economic trends impacted families across the income spectrum. From income and wealth inequality to economic insecurity, the gaps between the haves and the have nots remained, and some widened during this period. The authors' comprehensive review found the following three major takeaways: first, the biggest economic divides run through families with children; second, low‐income families face concentrated disadvantage marked by insecurity and precarity; and third, inequality and insecurity shaped the “dynamism” of family life, including how families respond culturally and emotionally to economic changes, and how these responses unfold over time. They examine active areas of research, including parenting trends and the transition to adulthood. They also document a new scholarly emphasis on uncertainty and instability along with the forces that exacerbate or mitigate them, such as job quality, economic volatility, wealth, and incarceration. Research during the past decade focused on the experience and consequences of dynamism, reflecting not only the reality that families evolve but also that they face continual change in their economic, social, and political contexts. The authors highlight research investigating how families “do dynamism,” work that looks over time or offers in‐depth examinations of how families adapt to and cope with dynamism every day. This research reveals that inequality and insecurity are not only matters of levels and gaps but also ongoing matters of meaning‐making, identity, and feeling. The authors conclude by highlighting some strengths and weaknesses of these research streams and pointing out new avenues for future scholarship.

Family Matters: Research on Family Ties and Health, 2010 to 2020

“…Family financial resources are highly correlated with many other family resources that benefit youth (e.g., parents' mental and physical health, safe neighborhoods), and it is possible that the key intervention to improve child well‐being is to improve parents' financial resources (Cooper & Pugh, ). Critiques of policy programs that seek to improve children's health and well‐being by improving parents' marital quality point out that the more effective path to improving both parents' relationships and children's health is to lift children out of poverty (Turney, ).…”

Family Processes and Children's and Adolescents' Well‐Being

“…Parenting fully mediated associations from interparental conflict in low‐ and middle‐income families, but only partially mediated associations in high‐income families. The article in this issue on families across the income spectrum provides details regarding economic diversity and family life (Cooper & Pugh, 2020).…”

“…Examinations that incorporate complexity and specificity will be enriched further by including stable and time‐varying moderators that span genetics, physiology, cognitions, emotions, relationship qualities, family structures, and sociodemographic characteristics. Other articles in this issue provide useful descriptions of characteristics that will help explain important variations in families during the next decade of scholarship (e.g., Cooper & Pugh, 2020; Reczek, 2020; Sweeney & Raley, 2020; Van Hook & Glick, 2020).…”

Families in Later Life: A Decade in Review

“…A comprehensive discussion of late‐life families is beyond the scope of a single article, so we are selective in coverage. (Related topics in this issue include immigrant families [Van Hook & Glick, ], work–family adaptations [Perry‐Jenkins, & Gerstel, ], income security [Cooper & Pugh, ], elder abuse [Hardesty & Ogolsky, ], and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning [LGBTQ] families [Reczek, ]. )…”