Mitigating Material Hardship: The Strategies Low‐Income Families Employ to Reduce the Consequences of Poverty*

Abstract

Despite decades of research, little is known about the contours of material hardship and how the social processes underlying specific domains of hardship are similar and different. We use qualitative interview data to examine five different domains of material hardship: housing, bill‐paying, food, medical, and clothing hardships. While mothers use social program participation, reliance on social networks, and individual strategies to mitigate hardships, the dominance of these strategies and their specific applications differ across hardship domains. These results complement recent research that identifies each domain of hardship as unique and suggest that domain‐specific hardship mitigation approaches are necessary.

Predicting Material Hardship Among Former Welfare-to-Work Participants: An Income- and Resource-Packaging Model

“…The present study contributes to the literature with a predictive model of material hardship based on income-and resource-packaging strategies. Although strategies have been described in qualitative work (Edin & Lein, 1997;Heflin et al, 2011), they are absent from predictive studies. Several measures in this study are associated with increased odds of experiencing material hardship, but other measures that were expected to be predictive were not.…”

“…Studies have shown that support provided by informal social networks of family and/or friends helps struggling families survive (Edin & Lein, 1997;Heflin et al, 2011;Henley et al, 2005;Stack, 1974). Thus, the provision of social support is hypothesized to predict a decreased likelihood of experiencing material hardship.…”

“…However, the study did not present a predictive model of material hardship that included other types of survival strategies because the purpose was to identify differences across study sites. Related qualitative work by Heflin et al (2011) drew on interview data from a sample of women in selected disadvantaged neighborhoods in Ohio. The researchers reported that social network-based strategies were used to mitigate each of the forms of material hardship measured, although the strategies were most prominent in food-related hardship.…”

“…Prior work has focused on describing experiences of material hardship (Boushey & Gundersen, 2001;Iceland & Bauman, 2007) and assessing the influence of income (Beverly, 2001a;Mayer & Jencks, 1989;Sullivan et al, 2008), employment and public assistance (Danziger, Heflin, Corcoran, Oltmans, & Wang, 2002), disability (Carle, Bauman, & Short, 2009;Rose, Parish, & Yoon, 2009;She & Livermore, 2007), transitions in family structure (Osborne, Berger, & Magnuson, 2012), and personal characteristics (Sullivan et al, 2008) on material hardship experiences. Other research predicts entrances into and exits from material hardship experiences (Heflin & Butler, 2013) and describes the strategies used to respond to hardships (Heflin, London, & Scott, 2011).…”

Affording Housing at the Expense of Health

“…The survival strategies of low-income householders have long been of interest to sociologists and others (Dominguez & Watkins, 2003; Du Bois, 2011; Edin & Lein, 1997; Heflin, London, & Scott, 2011; Jarrett & Jefferson, 2004; Roberts, 1994; Stack, 1975; Zekeri, 2007). More recently, the documentation of material hardship and corresponding strategies gained attention as families transitioned from welfare to work under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (Heflin et al, 2011).…”