Read the text and do the tasks
The Cost of Lost Income to Working Families
1. The average duration of unemployment from 1975 to 2000 varied between eleven and twenty weeks and averaged about three and one-half months (Economic Report of the President 2000, 356). Because of the tendency of official statistics to exclude discouraged workers, the real duration was probably higher.
2. Despite the high level of consumption in the U.S. economy most working people have very little financial savings. The bottom half of the income ladder would be unable to maintain a standard of living 25 percent above the poverty line by relying on their financial savings for even two months. Although many families have more than one wage earner and other survival options (such as loans from relatives, home equity loans, high-interest credit card debt, and expanded household production), the financial burden of unemployment can obviously be quite high.
3. The social support system for the unemployed has two major components, unemployment insurance and the social safety net. Over the last twenty-five years there has been a reduction in unemployment insurance. From 1980 to 1999, coverage fell from 43.9 percent to 37.2 percent of the unemployed. State unemployment insurance payments fell from 36.6 percent to 31.6 percent of lost wages. Because there have been many different changes in the social safety net, it is difficult to say how the overall level of social insurance has changed. If we use «government expenditures for income-tested benefits» as a proxy for safety net spending, it appears the net strengthened a bit.
4. Unemployment often has serious psychological impacts in addition to its economic burdens. A recent review of empirical research on happiness in the Journal of Economic Literature reported that «Happiness research suggests that unemployment strongly reduces subjectively self-reported well-being, both personally and for society as a whole. This is… in line with the view that unemployment is involuntary for the bulk of people affected» (Frey and Stutzer 2002, 428).
(Steven Mark Cohn: Reintroducing macroeconomics (a critical approach). – M.E. Sharp. Inc., 2007. – 368 p)
Determine the main idea of the text.
The text is about various changes which occurred in the both components of the social support system for the unemployed that is unemployment insurance and the social safety net which led to the decrease of unemployment.
Having read the text one can say that unemployment can cause American families serious financial problems in spite of the fact that they have some savings and can be supported by unemployment insurance and the social safety net.
The text describes the psychological problems of the unemployed especially the lack of happiness and well-being which according to the research are reduced both personally and for society as a whole.
The main idea of the text is to show that despite economic stability and the social support system in the US the impact of the unemployment on the working families was hard in both economic and psychological way.
