Who Speaks for the Poor? explains why parties represent some groups and not others. This book focuses attention on the electoral geography of income, and how it has changed over time, to account for cross-national differences in the political and partisan representation of low-income voters. Jusko develops a general theory of new party formation that shows how changes in the geographic distribution of groups across electoral districts create opportunities for new parties to enter elections, especially where changes favor groups previously excluded from local partisan networks.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) includes several provisions designed to expand insurance coverage that also alter the tie between employment and health insurance. In this paper, we exploit variation across geographic areas in the potential impact of the ACA to estimate its effect on health insurance coverage and labor market outcomes in the first two years after the implementation of its main features.

Income inequality and the achievement test score gap between high- and low-income children increased dramatically in the United States beginning in the 1970s. This article investigates the demographic (family income, mother’s education, family size, two-parent family structure, and age of mother at birth) underpinnings of the growing income-based gap in schooling using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.

Why should we care about wealth? It serves an insurance function by protecting against economic shocks, health and personal crises, and mishaps. It brings access to quality health care, educational opportunities, better-resourced communities, and other services. It shapes family economic mobility. It provides retirement security and a springboard for future generations’ investments in human capital and resources. And finally, social and political influence, as well as personal identity, are attached to wealth. It thus matters whether opportunities to amass wealth are equally available.

Racial and ethnic minorities experience higher-than-average rates of illness, have higher age-specific death rates throughout the life course, and are more likely to suffer from early onset of illnesses and more severe diseases than whites. In this article, I examine these and other differences in health outcomes for whites and blacks in the United States and show that black-white health disparities are large and appear to widen over the life cycle.