Person: Chaddha, Anmol
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Chaddha
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Anmol
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Chaddha, Anmol
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Publication The Welfare Functions of Credit and Debt in an Era of Rising Inequality(2015-01-20) Chaddha, Anmol; Western, Bruce; Bobo, LawrenceLow-income families have increasingly relied on debt as income inequality has grown and state policy has become less redistributive since the 1970s. This study examines the shift toward debt by linking the macro-level patterns in inequality, social policy and family debt to the micro-level analysis of family finances. Using several data sources on family finances--the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the Survey of Consumer Finances, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I analyze the tradeoff between social assistance and debt at the household level and the dynamics of family debt trajectories over time. Findings suggest that there is a general tradeoff between social assistance income and household debt. The reliance on debt in place of greater redistribution or social assistance is the result of a convergence of factors and explicit policy decisions that have promoted credit to improve the conditions of those who have been excluded from broader economic prosperity. The analysis of debt trajectories shows that debt has grown significantly faster for black families than white families. Social assistance, like welfare and the EITC, has become less effective in protecting low-income families from relying on debt. Taken together, this research suggests that growing debt places low-income families in increasingly precarious conditions in the long term, rather than the stability traditionally offered by the welfare state.Publication The Role of Theory in Ethnographic Research(Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) Wilson, William Julius; Chaddha, AnmolScholars, including urban poverty researchers, have not seriously debated the important issues that Loïc Wacquant raised in his controversial review of books by Elijah Anderson, Mitchell Duneier, and Katherine Newman concerning the disconnect between theory and ethnographic research. Despite the tone of Wacquant’s review, we feel that he made a contribution in raising important issues about the role of theory in ethnography. The responses to his review that address this issue, especially those by Anderson and Duneier, are also important because they help to broaden our understanding of how theory is used in ethnographic research. What we take from this exchange is that good ethnography is theory driven, and is likely to be much more reflective of inductive theoretical insights than those that are purely deductive. Moreover, we show that in some ethnographic studies the theoretical insights are neither strictly deductive nor inductive, but represent a combination of both.Publication "Way Down in the Hole": Systemic Urban Inequality and The Wire(University of Chicago Press, 2011) Wilson, William Julius; Chaddha, AnmolThe Wire is set in a modern American city shaped by economic restructuring and fundamental demographic change that led to widespread job loss and the depopulation of inner-city neighborhoods. While the series can be viewed as an account of the systemic failure of political, economic, and social institutions in Baltimore in particular, the fundamental principles depicted in The Wire certainly parallel changing conditions in other cities, especially older industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Indeed, it is for this reason that The Wire captures the attention of social scientists concerned with a comprehensive understanding of urban inequality, poverty, and race in American cities.