Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics Speaker Series: Elizabeth Ananat
When:
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Where:
ISR 2030 (426 Thompson St.)
Join the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics as we host Elizabeth Ananat, Mallya Professor of Women and Economics, Barnard College. On Tuesday, she will present, “Schedule Volatility in Hourly Service Work: Evidence and Implications for Federal Income-Support Policies.”
Abstract:
In the US, work opportunities for those with lower levels of formal education have moved in recent years toward service employment, and this concentration is especially strong among households with children. Even compared to other jobs for those without college degrees, service work is characterized by shorter tenure and less access to full-time hours, patterns that are visible in national data and are more pronounced for those with children. In novel data collected through daily text-message reports from hourly service workers with young children, we document additional patterns of volatility that have not previously been visible: in particular, daily and weekly volatility in work hours. We show that this volatility requires workers aiming to maximize their earnings to set aside many more hours for work than they are actually paid for–on average, twice as many. We develop novel statistics to capture these forms of volatility and to describe their sources. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for both means-tested programs and earnings-linked tax credits, the two major forms of income support provided by the federal government to families with children.
Bio:
Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat is the Mallya Professor of Women and Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University. She received her B.A. from Williams College and her Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She served as Senior Economist for Labor, Education, and Welfare at President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers in 2010. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of poverty and inequality. She has published papers in journals across economics, demography, developmental psychology, and public policy on topics including the effects of local economic downturns, of racial residential segregation, and of access to reproductive choice . One strand of her recent work focuses on the effects of unconditional cash transfers on child and family outcomes; another focuses on the challenges low-wage workers face balancing work and family responsibilities in today’s economy.