IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0240080.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Access and enrollment in safety net programs in the wake of COVID-19: A national cross-sectional survey

Author

Listed:
  • Brendan Saloner
  • Sarah E Gollust
  • Colin Planalp
  • Lynn A Blewett

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic is causing unprecedented job loss and financial strain. It is unclear how those most directly experiencing economic impacts may seek assistance from disparate safety net programs. To identify self-reported economic hardship and enrollment in major safety net programs before and early in the COVID-19 pandemic, we compared individuals with COVID-19 related employment or earnings reduction with other individuals. We created a set of questions related to COVID-19 economic impact that was added to a cross-sectional, nationally representative online survey of American adults (age ≥18, English-speaking) in the AmeriSpeak panel fielded from April 23–27, 2020. All analyses were weighted to account for survey non-response and known oversampling probabilities. We calculated unadjusted bivariate differences, comparing people with and without COVID-19 employment and earnings reductions with other individuals. Our study looked primarily at awareness and enrollment in seven major safety net programs before and since the pandemic (Medicaid, health insurance marketplaces/exchanges, unemployment insurance, food pantries/free meals, housing/renters assistance, SNAP, and TANF). Overall, 28.1% of all individuals experienced an employment reduction (job loss or reduced earnings). Prior to the pandemic, 39.0% of the sample was enrolled in ≥1 safety net program, and 50.0% of individuals who subsequently experienced COVID-19 employment reduction were enrolled in at least one safety net program. Those who experienced COVID-19 employment reduction versus those who did not were significantly more likely to have applied or enrolled in ≥1 program (45.9% versus 11.7%, p

Suggested Citation

  • Brendan Saloner & Sarah E Gollust & Colin Planalp & Lynn A Blewett, 2020. "Access and enrollment in safety net programs in the wake of COVID-19: A national cross-sectional survey," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-11, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0240080
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240080
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240080
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240080&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0240080?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elder Garcia Varela & Jamie Zeldman & Amy R. Mobley, 2022. "Community Stakeholders’ Perceptions on Barriers and Facilitators to Food Security of Families with Children under Three Years before and during COVID-19," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(17), pages 1-15, August.
    2. Michihito Ando & Masato Furuichi, 2022. "The association of COVID-19 employment shocks with suicide and safety net use: An early-stage investigation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(3), pages 1-26, March.
    3. Radey, Melissa & Lowe, Sarah & Langenderfer-Magruder, Lisa & Posada, Kristine, 2022. "“Showing Everybody’s True Colors”: Informal networks of low-income single mothers and their young children during the COVID-19 pandemic," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0240080. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.