July 5, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Public assistance and family
characteristics
Families receiving
public assistance differ from other families in several characteristics as
well as in the way they allocate their spending.
![Characteristics of families by receipt of public assistance, 1998](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120925080217im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2000/Jul/wk1/art02.gif)
[Chart data—TXT]
Compared with other families, the average family receiving public
assistance is slightly larger and has more people under age 18. Both
assisted and nonassisted families have the same number of persons aged 65
and older.
Assisted families have lower average numbers of earners, own a lower
number of vehicles, and are only half as likely to be homeowners. For all
three of these characteristics, the numbers decrease as the number of
assistance programs increases.
These data are a product of the Consumer
Expenditure Survey. The public
assistance programs included in the analysis were supplementary security
income, welfare, medicaid, food stamps, housing subsidies, and public
housing. Find more information in "Spending
patterns of public-assisted families,"
by Lucilla Tan, Monthly Labor Review, May 2000.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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Read more »