Dynamics of income packaging: a 10-year longitudinal study

This article examines the methods and dynamics of packaging multiple sources of wage and nonwage income as a means of making ends meet over a 10-year period among a sample of displaced steelworkers who lost jobs as a result of plant closings in the 1980s and then experienced extensive downward mobility. The study tracked changes in the respondents' income and employment over a decade, the dynamics of their use of social services, their pooling of a variety of income sources, and the use of social assistance to supplement low wages. The study found that among this sample income packaging was a universal economic strategy and that use of social services did not affect later employment and earnings.