Expanding Health-Care Access in the United States: Gender and the Patchwork 'Universalism' of the Affordable Care Act

This paper focuses on the ways in which women in the United States are impacted by the 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (usually referred to as ACA or 'Obamacare'). The ACA's three main goals of expanding access, increasing consumer protections and reducing costs while increasing quality of services will improve coverage, access to services and types of services that benefit women (and men). However, universal coverage remains illusive due to employer-based insurance coverage that allows firms to make decisions about coverage type. This patchwork universalism is the result of political decisions to extend rather than transform the current health-care system and as such reproduces many of the previously existing problems of uneven costs and coverage. The paper argues the ACA is consistent with other sets of US social welfare and labour market regimes that stratify access to social protections by income, race/ethnicity and gender as well as provide individual states with administrative and policy authority. The paper concludes that the passage of ACA will vastly improve health-care coverage in the United States, however, will continue to leave millions of people uninsured. This paper was produced for UN Women's flagship report Progress of the World's Women 2015-2016 and is released as part of the UN Women discussion paper series

Moving Target: The Dilemma of Serving Massachusetts Poor Families

While Community Action Agencies’ original mission of serving the poor has changed little over the last three decades, government commitments to the poor, the population of poor individuals and families, and women’s economic expectations have changed considerably. This article documents the trends in family structure, women’s employment patterns, and poverty policies in Massachusetts between 1970 and 2000. The increase in poor, single-mother families and poverty policies that emphasize employment present dynamic challenges for Community Action Agencies (and others who serve the poor), but also create some new organizing opportunities

An Economic Profile of Women in Massachusetts

This report provides a profile of women\u27s current economic position in Massachusetts. It examines the age, race, and geographical distribution of women and girls across the state; family structure, income and poverty; and women\u27s labor force participation, occupational and industrial distribution in jobs, and earnings. When relevant 1990s Massachusetts data are compared to national data and to Massachusetts data from the 1970s. Women across the Commonwealth have experienced tremendous changes in their lives over the last two decades as a result of changes in the economy and family structure. For women, the changes provide new opportunities, but they also exacerbate or even create new tensions between family and work life. One set of changes involves the relatively rapid restructuring of the Massachusetts economy away from manufacturing toward a more service-oriented economy operating under increased globalization opportunities and pressures. The other set of changes concerns the steady increase of women into the paid labor market and the varied composition of families and households. Women\u27s economic activities, both in the home and in the workplace, are still quite different from men\u27s. Women provide more unpaid labor at home than men, earn less from paid employment, and work in different jobs. The data presented here is intended to inform and facilitate discussion concerning our economic future

Low-Wage Workers Really Feel the Squeeze

In the United States, it has been generally assumed that those who held a steady job could make ends meet but in today’s labor market nothing could be further from the truth. Workers in low-wage jobs can face double jeopardy: insufficient income to cover their basic needs and lack of access to job-related benefits to supplement their earnings. Public work supports — programs to help families fill basic needs such as health care, child care, food, and housing — can fill the gaps, and for many, they do. Still, in Massachusetts close to one out of every four individuals in a family with earnings does not have enough to meet basic personal needs, even with public supports

Tax to Grind: Unequal Personal Income Taxation of Massachusetts Single-Parent Families and Options for Reform

While Massachusetts households headed by single parents have, on average, less income than other types of families, they are subject to the same effective income tax rate as the population as a whole. Consequently, such head-of-household families are victims of inequitable tax treatment in two ways. First, their current personal exemptions result in a higher tax burden on these families than on families of the same size and income who file joint income tax returns. Second, head-of-household families, defined as single filers, must apply a lower no-tax threshold than joint filers, even though the former are also composed of two or more persons. Both tax provisions translate to less tax relief for many low-income families than other low-income filers, yet they can easily be remedied at a relatively low cost to the commonwealth. This article presents data on the 1988 tax burdens of single, joint, and head-of-household filers and suggests three options for tax reform to correct these inequities

Why it’s Harder (and Different) for Single Mothers: Gender, Motherhood, Labor Markets and Public Work Supports

This paper focuses on low-wage work and single mothers. I begin with a typical example of early 20th century research on low-wage workers as it helps provides both an historical explanation for women’s earnings and employment situation over much of the 20th century and important insights into new directions for research and advocacy. Following that, I tease apart the distinctions between having low wages and being low income, particularly as these apply to single mothers. I then detail the resource base for single mothers which entails the complex relationship between family structure and obligations, earnings and employment benefits, and public supports. I argue that the three main current analytical approaches to single mothers’ resources are individually insufficient to tackle the new dilemmas facing single mothers with low earnings, but can be linked together to more fully illuminate these dilemmas. Finally, I offer three directions for research and advocacy

Bridging the Gaps: A Picture of How Work Supports Work in Ten States

This report is the culmination of a multi-state study on the extent to which work supports-policies to ensure families can access basics, such as health care, child care, food and housing-fill in the gaps for families whose jobs offer low wages or inadequate benefits

The bay of Cádiz within the context of the punic world: ethnic and political aspects

Analizamos a partir de los datos literarios griegos y latinos y de la documentación arqueológica la complejidad étnica y política del entorno de la bahía de Cádiz, con la ciudad de Gadir como protagonista. Proponemos que la colonización fenicia y los fenómenos de mestizaje y aculturación con las poblaciones locales de esta área configuraron un sustrato demográfico y cultural mestizo con zonas de predominio fenicio, como el entorno de la bahía, y otras de mayoría tartesia- turdetana conviviendo con comunidades fenicias. La literatura posterior a la conquista romana (Estrabón, Mela, Plinio, Ptolomeo) denominó a las poblaciones de origen semita con el étnico bastetano o bástulo, habitantes del litoral atlántico y mediterráneo de la actual Andalucía, y diferenciadas étnicamente de las turdetanas. En lo que se refiere a los aspectos políticos, sugerimos una delimitación territorial de Gadir centrada en el territorio insular y en litoral de la bahía, fronteriza con dos formaciones estatales como Asta Regia y Asido, y sometemos a crítica el concepto de “liga púnico-gaditana” por el cual Gadir se erige con el liderazgo de las antiguas colonias fenicias de Iberia. En nuestra opinión, ese papel lo adquiriría la ciudad tras la conquista romana.Using data from Greek and Roman texts and from the archaeological record, we analyse the ethnic and political complexity of the bay of Cadiz, with particular emphasis on the city of Gadir. We suggest that the Phoenician colonisation and the phenomena of mixture and acculturation of the local populations of this area shaped a demographic and cultural basis with areas of Phoenician dominance, for instance in the area of the bay, and others of tartessian-turdetanian majority that coexisted with Phoenician communities. The literature after the Roman conquest (Strabo, Mela, Pliny, Ptolemy) named Bastetanians the populations of Semitic origin living in the Atlantic and Mediterranean littoral of present-day Andalusia (Spain) which were ethnically different from the Turdetanians. In relation with political issues, we suggest a delimitation of the territory of Gadir, in the insular area and littoral of the bay, which acted as a frontier with the state formations of Asta Regia and Asido. We critique the concept of the “gaditanian-punic league” in which Gadir would have led the ancient Phoenician colonies of Iberia. In our opinion, the city would only have acquired that role after the Roman conquest.España. Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia HUM-2005-0782