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Since the Expanding Prosperity Impact Collaborative (EPIC) launched our investigation into income volatility in early 2016, much has been learned about volatility’s destabilizing effects on American families. Now that EPIC’s focus on income volatility is coming to a close, we wanted to recap some of the field’s most notable research achievements, as well as recommend what we see as important and needed opportunities for further work.
When just one person in a community experiences a drop in income, dozens of people in that person’s kin and social network can be impacted, often negatively. On the other hand, those with strong kin and social networks are more likely to be able to cope with volatility when it inevitably requires the affected individual to juggle work, childcare, schooling, and other obligations. Understanding these network effects is critical to understanding the full consequences of volatility.