Introduction Timely and appropriate accommodations can help employees who experience disabilities stay at work instead of exiting the labor force. Employers can play a critical role in connecting such workers with the accommodations they need. This qualitative study seeks to inform policy makers who want to improve workforce retention outcomes by uncovering factors that affect whether employers provide accommodations to, and ultimately retain, employees with disabilities. Methods We conducted semistructured interviews with a convenience sample of human resources professionals in 14 Arkansas-based employers, yielding detailed information on 50 cases in which an employee developed or disclosed a disability. We analyzed the interviews using a grounded theory approach and compared cases to identify key themes emerging across subgroups of cases. Results Two organization-level factors and four employee-level factors influenced employers' efforts to accommodate and retain employees with disabilities: employer resources; employers' communication with the employee and other stakeholders; employee tenure; employee work performance; active/sedentary nature of employee role; and the severity and type of employees' health conditions. Conclusions Consistent with prior literature, employers with greater access to resources and better ability to communicate generally made greater effort to accommodate and retain employees with disabilities. However, employers in the study did not deploy these resources and processes consistently when making decisions about whether and how to provide accommodations to workers with disabilities; employee-level characteristics affected their actions. Policy makers should consider intervention approaches that reach workers who may be overlooked by employers with scarce resources.

Scholarship recognizes that problems with transportation have important consequences for individual well-being and life chances. Yet no single measure exists that captures the multiple manifestations of transportation insecurity, a condition in which one is unable to regularly move from place to place in a safe and timely manner because one lacks the resources necessary for transportation. Using an original survey of 511 respondents from GfK's KnowledgePanel®, we use exploratory factor analysis to estimate an initial factor structure, a step toward developing a new measure of transportation insecurity: the Transportation Security Index. Our results suggest that a two-factor solution best fits the data, and item content suggests that the factors represent the material and relational manifestations of transportation insecurity, respectively.

Unemployment Insurance (UI) is the major social insurance program that protects against lost earnings resulting from involuntary unemployment. Existing literature finds that low‐earning unemployed workers experience difficulty accessing UI benefits. The most prominent policy reform designed to increase rates of monetary eligibility, and thus UI receipt, among these unemployed workers is the Alternative Base Period (ABP). In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act sought to increase use of the ABP, making ABP adoption a necessary precondition for states to receive their share of the $7 billion targeted at UI programs. By January 2013, 40 states and the District of Columbia had adopted the ABP despite the absence of an evaluation of ABP efficacy using nationally representative data. This study analyzes Current Population Survey data from 1987 to 2011 to assess the efficacy of the ABP in increasing UI receipt among low‐educated unemployed workers. We used a natural‐experiment design to capture the combined behavioral and mechanical effects of the policy change. We found no association between state‐level ABP adoption and individual UI receipt for all unemployed workers. However, among part‐time unemployed workers with less than a high school degree, adoption of the ABP was associated with a 2.8 percentage point increase in the probability of UI receipt.

Transportation insecurity is a condition in which a person is unable to regularly move from place to place in a safe or timely manner and has important implications for the study of poverty and inequality. Drawing on nationally representative survey data and a new, validated measure of transportation insecurity, the Transportation Security Index, the authors provide the first descriptive portrait of transportation insecurity in the United States, offering national estimates, examining which demographic groups are most likely to experience this condition and considering what factors are correlated with it. The authors find that one in four adults experience transportation insecurity. Adults who live in poverty, do not own cars, live in urban areas, are younger, have less education, and are non-White experience the greatest transportation insecurity. Correlates analyses largely confirm these descriptive differences. Such high rates and large disparities suggest that greater investigation into this form of material hardship is warranted.

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