Objective. We examine how low-income households have drawn upon public and charitable nonprofit sources of social assistance during and after the Great Recession. Methods. Using panel survey data collected in the Detroit Metropolitan Area in 2008 and 2010, we explore the relationships between household characteristics, program use, and bundling of assistance. Results. Roughly twothirds of Detroit households within 300 percent of poverty received a public safety net benefit in the previous year; about 40 percent received assistance from more than one public program. More than one in six households received help from a nonprofit charity. Low educational attainment, unemployment, and health limitations are positively related to receipt of multiple public assistance programs. Conclusions. Our findings point to persistent needs among poor and near-poor households after the Great Recession, as well as to the reality that many low-income households draw upon multiple sources of public assistance even when working. Many low-income households remain detached from public and charitable sources of support even as the safety net has expanded in response to the downturn.

Concern about spatial access to food retailers and its relationship to household food security has increased in recent years, placing greater importance on understanding how proximity to food retailers is related to household food consumption. Using data from the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study (MRRS), a panel survey of working‐age adults in the Detroit Metropolitan Area, this article explores whether access to the food retailers is associated with food insecurity. We use unique data about food retailers in metropolitan Detroit to develop an array of food retailer access measures that account for distance to nearest retailer, density of retailers, commute times, mode of transit, and type of retailer. Across most measures, we find that many vulnerable population groups have greater or at least comparable spatial access to food resources as less vulnerable populations groups. There is little evidence, however, that greater access to food retailers is associated with food security.

Provision of antipoverty and other social services by nonstate organizations is growing in importance in both the United States and the Russian Federation. Th e history of such provision in the United States may off er insights for the emerging system of nonstate provision in Russia. To illuminate these points, we provide historical overviews of both contexts and then we examine data from two surveys of social service organizations in the United States: the Multi-City Survey of Social Service Providers and the Rural Survey of Social Service Providers.We fi nd that nonstate actors strengthen social capital in poor neighborhoods and oft en link poor persons to public agencies. Nonstate actors strengthen other local institutions through programmatic partnerships and collaboration. However, fi nancing arrangements of nonstate welfare provision may favor effi ciency over concerns about equity, sustainability, and predictability. In addition, the primacy of nonstate provision leads to a welfare state that is more varied geographically than might be anticipated otherwise. Such variability appears to disadvantage highpoverty and predominately minority communities the most. Finally, politically, nonstate welfare provision may occur with little public discussion, debate, or refl ection as it evolves over time. Th ese fi ndings invoke important questions for Russian policy-makers as they seek to develop an equitable and effi cient means of providing assistance to their population.

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