Economic Crises

Since 2016, the American Family Survey has included a series of questions exploring Americans’ experiences with significant economic challenges. Specifically, we asked whether, in the past 12 months, the respondent has experienced any of the following economic crises:

• Were you ever hungry, but didn’t eat because you couldn’t afford enough food?
• Did you not pay the full amount of an important bill (like rent, mortgage, or a utility bill)?
• Did you borrow or receive money from friends or family to help pay the bills?
• Did you move in with other people even for a little while because of financial problems?
• Did you stay at a shelter, in an abandoned building, an automobile or any other place not meant for regular housing, even for one night?
• Was there anyone in your household who needed to see a doctor or go to the hospital but couldn’t go because of the cost?

In many years, as many as 4 in 10 Americans have experienced at least one of these crises. Perhaps surprisingly, the percentage experiencing crisis dropped dramatically in 2020 and 2021, though these pandemic years were also accompanied by substantial aid to families. As such aid subsided, the percentage of respondents reporting a crisis increased again, and in 2024, the percentage returned to a level roughly on par with pre-pandemic patterns.

Not surprisingly, the experience of economic crisis varies considerably by income group, though all income groups experienced the pandemic decline followed by a subsequent rebound. Still, Americans making less than $40,000 per year appear to be dramatically more likely to experience a crisis than those whose annual household incomes exceed $80,000. In 2024, for example, 56% of low-income respondents reported experiencing at least one crisis, compared to only one-quarter of the high-income group — a difference of more than 30 percentage points.

Family structure and the presence of children also affect Americans’ levels of economic vulnerability. In the 2024 data, married respondents were nearly 20 percentage points less likely to experience a crisis than nonmarried respondents, regardless of whether or not they were parents of young children. Still, the presence or absence of children also matters: whether among married or unmarried respondents, having children increased the likelihood of experiencing a crisis by approximately 17 percentage points. The group least likely to have experienced a crisis, then, is married Americans without children, while the group most likely to report a crisis is unmarried respondents with young children in the household. Nearly 60% of those respondents said they had experienced a crisis in the past year. Clearly, the economic life of this group is quite precarious.

However, among the lowest-income Americans with young children, being married makes little difference to the experience of economic challenge: approximately two-thirds of those respondents told us they had experienced one of the economic crises on our list, regardless of marital status. Even so, married respondents are simply far less likely than unmarried respondents to find themselves in the lowest household income category. Among respondents with children, only 13% of married respondents reported being in the lowest income category, compared to 52% of unmarried respondents. Conversely, nearly 6 in 10 married respondents reported household incomes above $80,000. In other words, while both married and unmarried parents of young children in the lowest income category experience economic crises at similar rates, marriage is also strongly correlated with higher household incomes.

What specific types of economic crises are most common for respondents in our sample? Around 1 in 5 respondents in the full sample said they had to borrow money to pay bills or did not pay the full amount of a bill they had received. A little over 1 in 10 Americans said they were hungry but could not afford food or were unable to see a doctor because of the cost. A smaller percentage – though still as many as one in twenty – struggled with housing and had to either move in with friends or family or (less commonly) stay at a shelter. Notably, the pandemic aid that many Americans received in 2020 and 2021 appears to have made a significant difference in Americans’ ability to pay bills and eat sufficiently. Those indicators of crisis dipped substantially during the pandemic and have since returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Ten years of monitoring self-reports of significant economic challenges yields several important insights. First, economic crises are common: in most years, approximately 4 in 10 Americans report experiencing at least one of the challenges on our list, with an inability to pay bills being the most frequent concern.

Second, government support for families makes a meaningful difference: during the years of pandemic assistance, levels of economic crisis dipped substantially, returning to their former levels after the assistance ended.

Third, marriage appears to insulate families from these crises, in part because marriage is associated with higher incomes — and high-income Americans are better able to pay their bills and have access to housing and health care. Among parents with young children in the home, marriage is associated with a nearly 20-point difference in the experience of crisis. In this sense, marriage is an institution that shields young children from economic vulnerability.

By Christopher F. Karpowitz and Jeremy C. Pope with research assistance by Ellie Mitchell

METHODOLOGY NOTE

Between August 22-29, 2024, YouGov interviewed 3,245 respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 3,000 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined, and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The weights were then post-stratified on 2020 presidential vote choice as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (4 categories), race (4 categories), and education (4 categories), to produce the final weight. The overall margin of error is +/- 2%.