Publications

2023
Harvey H, Perkins K. Shared Households and Housing Instability. In: The Sociology of Housing. University of Chicago Press ; 2023. Publisher's Version
Harvey H, Dunifon R. Why Mothers Double Up: The Role of Demographic, Economic, and Family Characteristics. Journal of Marriage and Family. 2023;Early view, online. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Objective: We examine how mothers' characteristics are associated with forming a doubled-up household as a host (allowing adult extended family members/nonrelatives to join their household) and guest (moving into a home owned/rented by extended family/nonrelatives).

Background: Doubled-up households are increasingly common and shape families' lives in meaningful ways. Although doubling up is often considered a response to economic need, few studies directly examine the range of characteristics that may predict entry into doubled-up households.

Method: Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we examine how demographic, economic and housing, and family characteristics are associated with mothers' risk of becoming doubled-up as hosts and guests.

Results: Multiple factors have independent links to doubling up, including race/ethnicity, housing assistance receipt, and socio-economic status. Family factors are especially important; in particular, experiencing a new birth and having a young child are associated with doubling up as a guest, and romantic relationship changes are associated with doubling up as either a host or guest. Additionally, many predictors of doubling up as a host and guest differ. Finally, we find that almost one-third of adult mothers who are doubled-up as guests never transitioned into a doubled-up household; rather, they remained in their childhood home.

Conclusion: A full accounting of when and why families double up requires researchers to attend to mothers' needs—and changes in these needs—across multiple dimensions and to distinguish between hosts and guests.

Fomby P, Harvey H, Musick K. Income Sources Across Childhood in Families with Nonresident Fathers. Demography. 2023;10424403. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Unpartnered mothers rely on formal and informal income sources to support their coresident minor children. Building on work focusing on selective populations and shorter time horizons, we describe the family income sources on which U.S. women and their minor children rely for up to 17 years following an unpartnered birth or union dissolution (Panel Study of Income Dynamics 2001–2017; N = 12,369 person-year records from 3,148 children). Using rich description and fixed-effect models, we treat family income as dynamic, mapping change in the share and amount of family income from multiple sources as children age and women gain employment experience; enter new unions; experience changes in eligibility for public support programs; and receive contributions from kin, friends, and other household members. A patchwork of income sources is the norm throughout childhood, with mothers' earnings nearly universal but insufficient as a sole source of family income. Maternal repartnering increases family income through new partner earnings but is accompanied by offsetting reductions in other income sources, particularly from outside the household. In the context of weak institutional support for U.S. families, families with nonresident fathers rely on a complex mix of income sources to make ends meet.
2021
Harvey H, Dunifon R, Pilkauskas N. Under whose roof? Understanding the living arrangements of children in doubled-up households. Demography. 2021;58 (3) :821-846. Publisher's VersionAbstract
A growing literature in family demography examines children's residence in doubled-up (shared) households with extended family members and nonkin. This research has largely overlooked the role of doubling up as a housing strategy, with “hosts” (householders) providing housing support for “guests” living in their home. Yet, understanding children's experiences in doubled-up households requires attention to host/guest status. Using the American Community Survey and Survey of Income and Program Participation, we identify the prevalence of children doubling up as hosts and guests in different household compositions (multigenerational, extended family, nonkin), show how this varies by demographic characteristics, and examine children's patterns of residence across these household types. We find large variation by demographic characteristics. More disadvantaged children have higher rates of doubling up as guests than hosts, whereas more advantaged children have higher rates of doubling up as hosts than guests. Additionally, compared with hosts, guests more often use doubling up as a longer-term strategy; a greater share of guests live consistently doubled up over a three-year period, but those who do transition between household types experience more transitions on average than do hosts. Our findings show the importance of attending to both housing status and household composition when studying children living in doubled-up households.
2020
Harvey H. When Mothers Can’t "Pay the Cost to Be the Boss": Roles and Identity within Doubled-up Households. Social Problems. 2020. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Although the independent nuclear family remains the ideal family form in most Americans’ minds, rising housing costs have made residential independence increasingly difficult. Sharing a home provdes a common safety net for lower-income mothers, yet we know little about how mothers experience and interpret this household form. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 52 mothers, I find that doubling up as a guest in someone else’s home – though not hosting someone else in their home – threatens mothers’ identities as adults and good parents. Mothers describe doubling up in someone else’s home as incompatible with their ideals of adulthood and family life, which are organized around the independent nuclear family. While mothers expect to control their daily lives and childrearing, householders retain authority over the home and its inhabitants, and there is no taken-for-granted way of reconciling household members’ conflicting expectations. In response to the stress on their identities, mothers who live doubled-up in someone else’s home often seek to establish themselves as head of their nuclear family, even when they are not the household head, by engaging in identity work: defining physical space as their own, emphasizing their contributions to the household, and asserting their status as parents.
Harvey H. Cumulative Effects of Doubling Up in Childhood. Demography. 2020;57 :501–528. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Living in a doubled-up, or shared, household is a common experience. Nearly one-half of children in the United States double up at some point during childhood, yet we know little about the cumulative effects of these households on children. This study estimates the effects on young adult health and educational attainment of childhood years spent in three doubled-up household types: (1) those formed with children’s grandparent(s), (2) those formed with children’s adult sibling(s), and (3) those formed with other extended family or non-kin adults. Using marginal structural models and inverse probability of treatment weighting—methods that account for the fact that household composition is both a cause and consequence of other family characteristics—I find that doubling up shapes children’s life chances, but the effects vary depending on children’s relationships with household members. Childhood years spent living with nongrandparent extended family or non-kin adults are associated with worse young adult outcomes, but coresidence with grandparents is not significantly associated with young adult outcomes after selection into these households is accounted for, and coresidence with adult siblings may be beneficial in some domains. By studying the effects of coresidence with adults beyond the nuclear family, this research contributes to a fuller understanding of the implications of family complexity for children.
Darrah-Okike J, Harvey H, Fong K. “Because the World Consists of Everybody”: Understanding Parents’ Preferences for Neighborhood Diversity. City & Community. 2020;19 (2) :374-397. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Previous research, primarily using survey data, highlights preferences about neighborhood racial composition as a potential contributor to residential segregation. However, we know little about how individuals, especially parents, understand neighborhood racial composition. We examine this question using in‐depth interview data from a racially diverse sample of 156 parents of young children in two metropolitan areas. Prior scholarship on neighborhood racial preferences has mostly been animated by expectations about in‐group attraction, out‐group avoidance, the influence of stereotypes, and perceived associations between race and status. However, we find that a substantial subset of parents expressed a desire for racially and ethnically mixed neighborhoods—a residential preference at odds with racial segregation. Parents across race conceptualized neighborhood diversity as beneficial for children's development. They expressed shared logics, reasoning that neighborhood diversity cultivates skills and comfort interacting with racial others; teaches tolerance; and provides cultural enrichment. However, these ideas intersected with racial segregation and stratification to shape parents’ understandings of diversity and hinder the realization of parents’ aspirations. Beliefs about the benefits of neighborhood diversity were rarely a primary motivation for residential choices. Nonetheless, parents’ perceptions of the advantages of neighborhood racial mixing reveal the reach of discourse on the value of diversity and suggest a potential opportunity to advance residential desegregation.
Harvey H, Fong K, Edin K, DeLuca S. Forever Homes and Temporary Stops: Housing Search Logics and Residential Selection. Social Forces. 2020;98 (4) :1498–1523. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Residential selection is central in determining children’s housing, neighborhood, and school contexts, and an extensive literature considers the social processes that shape residential searches and attainment. While this literature typically frames the residential search as a uniform process oriented around finding residential options with desired characteristics, we examine whether individuals may differentially conceive of these searches in ways that sustain inequality in residential attainment. Drawing on repeated, in-depth interviews with a stratified random sample of 156 households with young children in two metropolitan counties, we find that parents exhibit distinct residential search logics, informed by the constraints they face. Higher-income families usually engage in purposive searches oriented around their residential preferences. They search for “forever homes” that will meet their families’ needs for years to come. In contrast, low-income parents typically draw on a logic of deferral. While they hope to eventually search for a home with the unit, neighborhood, and school characteristics they desire, aspirations for homeownership lead them to conceive of their moves (which are often between rental units) as “temporary stops,” which justifies accepting homes that are inconsistent with their long-term preferences. In addition, because they are often “pushed” to move by negative circumstances, they focus on their immediate housing needs and, in the most extreme cases, adopt an “anywhere but here” approach. These logics constitute an unexamined mechanism through which economic resources shape residential searches and ultimate attainment.
2015
Moynihan D, Herd P, Harvey H. Administrative Burden: Learning, Psychological, and Compliance Costs in Citizen-State Interactions. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. 2015;25 (1) :43-69. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This article offers two theoretical contributions. First, we develop the concept of administrative burden as an important variable in understanding how citizens experience the state. Administrative burden is conceptualized as a function of learning, psychological, and compliance costs that citizens experience in their interactions with government. Second, we argue that administrative burden is a venue of politics, that is, the level of administrative burden placed on an individual, as well as the distribution of burden between the state and the individual, will often be a function of deliberate political choice rather than simply a product of historical accident or neglect. The opaque nature of administrative burdens may facilitate their use as forms of “hidden politics,” where significant policy changes occur without broad political consideration. We illustrate this argument via an analysis of the evolution of Medicaid policies in the state of Wisconsin. Across three Governorships, the level of burden evolved in ways consistent with the differing political philosophies of each Governor, with federal actors playing a secondary but important role in shaping burden in this intergovernmental program. We conclude by sketching a research agenda centered on administrative burden.
2014
Tach L, Edin K, Harvey H, Bryan B. The Family-Go-Round: Family Complexity and Father Involvement from a Father's Perspective. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. 2014;654 (1) :169-184. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Men who have children with several partners are often assumed to be “deadbeats” who eschew their responsibilities to their children. Using data from the nationally representative National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort (NLSY-97), we show that most men in complex families intensively parent the children of one mother while being less involved, or not involved at all, with children by others. Repeated qualitative interviews with 110 low-income noncustodial fathers reveal that men in complex families often engage with and provide, at least to some degree, for all of the biological and stepchildren who live in one mother’s household. These activities often exceed those extended to biological children living elsewhere. Interviews also show that by devoting most or all of their resources to the children of just one mother, men in complex families feel successful as fathers even if they are not intensively involved with their other biological children.

2013
Herd P, DeLeire T, Harvey H, Moynihan DP. Shifting Administrative Burden to the State: The Case of Medicaid Take‐Up. Public Administration Review. 2013;73 (s1) :S69-S81. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Administrative burden is an individual's experience of policy implementation as onerous. Such burdens may be created because of a desire to limit payments to ineligible claimants, but they also serve to limit take-up of benefits by eligible claimants. For citizens, this burden may occur through learning about a program; complying with rules and discretionary bureaucratic behavior to participate; and the psychological costs of participating in an unpopular program. Using a mixed-method approach, the authors explain process changes that reduced individual burden and demonstrate how this resulted in increased take-up in Medicaid in the state of Wisconsin. The findings inform the planned expansion of Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. A key design principle for Medicaid and other means-tested programs is that it is possible to increase program take-up while maintaining program integrity by shifting administrative burdens from the citizen to the state.