Quotes from Jonathan Morduch

A 2014 New York Times profile of a Starbucks barista so clearly demonstrated the serious negative consequences of her frequently changing work schedule (especially on her ability to find quality child care), and how common irregular and volatile schedules were for Starbucks workers, that the company announced changes to its scheduling policies within forty-eight hours.46

Between 2003 and 2013, health insurance premiums for employer-provided health benefits rose by 73 percent—and workers' share of that increase was 93 percent. Deductibles more than doubled.

Housing costs are also squeezing middle- and lower-income families. For the poorest third of households, housing expenses have increased more than 50 percent since the mid-1990s and for the middle third, about 25 percent.

Today, about a quarter of poor families with children are covered by TANF, for example, down from about 70 percent twenty years ago.

Nationally, 22 percent of Americans reported overdrawing their bank accounts at least once in the previous twelve months,

There has to be an easier way. That was the conviction that inspired Jon Schlossberg and Quinten Farmer to launch a technology company named Even whose mission is to help families deal with income spikes and dips.

But our data, along with other research, point to new ways of understanding saving among low- and moderate-income Americans. Many of these families are committed, effective savers; they're just not saving in the ways financial advisors might imagine. They put aside money for expenses they anticipate in the next few months, not the distant future.

Becky's experience of poverty is common. In fact, temporary poverty like Becky experienced is far more common than the chronic, grinding deprivation that easily comes to mind when thinking of poverty. The idea that most people who require help are born poor and will always be poor, subsisting only thanks to state benefits, is increasingly out of whack with the facts.

The data tell a clear story: families leave poverty in great numbers, and they enter poverty in great numbers. Only a small share lives in poverty for long periods.

In 2006, political scientist Jacob Hacker described what he called the "Great Risk Shift" in a book by the same name. Over the half century following World War II, governments and businesses gradually shifted financial risks from their ledgers onto the shoulders of individuals and families.

One of the origins of tipping in nineteenth-century America lies in the refusal of white business owners to pay newly freed, black workers a wage, and there are still documented differences in tips received by servers today based on their race.

The indication is that participating in the gig economy requires either a base of capital (a vehicle, a room to rent) or technology skills—both of which are associated with higher levels of education—and less vulnerability to income volatility, since higher levels of education are correlated with salaried and non-tipped jobs.

The most recent data available from the U.S. Census's SIPP show that 90 million people, nearly one-third of all Americans, experienced poverty for two months or more between 2009 and 2011. In contrast, just 10 million people, less than 4 percent of the population, were poor for the entire three years.

Indeed, the instability of families' incomes has risen faster than the inequality of families' incomes.