Randy Albelda is a professor of economics and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Social Policy at University of Massachusetts Boston. She has worked as research director of the Massachusetts State Senate's Taxation Committee and the legislature's Special Commission on Tax Reform. Her research and teaching covers a broad range of economic policies affecting low-income women and families. In addition to many academic journal articles and policy reports, she is coauthor of the books Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women’s Work, Women’s Poverty; Unlevel Playing Fields: Understanding Wage Inequality and Wage Discrimination; and The War on the Poor: A Defense Manual. Albelda co-led the Bridging the Gaps project bringing together researchers and advocates from nine states and Washington DC to examine the gaps between basic needs and earnings in light of welfare reform in the 1990s. Albelda recently co-authored the report Women in the Down Economy: Impacts of the Recession and the Stimulus in Massachusetts.
Articles
Different Anti-Poverty Programs, Same Single-Mother Poverty: Fifteen Years of Welfare Reform, Dollars and Sense (2012)
Time Binds: US anti-poverty policies, poverty and single mother’s wellbeing, Feminist Economics (2011)
Many US antipoverty programs and measures assume mothers have little, intermittent, or no employment and...
“To Work More or Not to Work More: Difficult Choices, Complex Decisions for Low-wage Parents” (with Jennifer Shea), Journal of Poverty (2010)
Employment promotion has dominated antipoverty policies in the United States over the last several decades....
Bridging the Gaps Between Earnings and Basic Needs in Massachusetts (with Jennifer Shea), MassBenchmarks (2008)
In the United States, it is generally assumed that people who hold a steady job...
Low-Wage Workers Really Feel the Squeeze, MassBenchmarks (2008)
In the United States, it has been generally assumed that those who held a steady...
Books
Unlevel Playing Fields: Understanding Wage Inequality and Discrimination, 3rd Edition (with Robert Drago and Steve Shulman) (2010)
Unlevel Playing Fields presents a uniquely usable, one-volume introduction to wage inequality and discrimination in...
The Dilemmas of Lone Motherhood: Essays from Feminist Economics (with Susan Himmerweit and Jane Humphries) (2005)
The essays in this volume address a range of the dilemmas lone mothers routinely face,...
Lost Ground: Poverty, Welfare Reform and Beyond (with Ann Withorn) (2002)
In the mid-1980s, the popularity of Charles Murray's anti-welfare treatise Losing Ground signaled the rising...
Book Chapters
Paid Family and Medical Leave (with Betty Reid Mandell), The Crisis of Caregiving: Social Welfare Policy in the US (2010)
This book discusses the crisis of caregiving as it affects parents seeking to provide good...
Reports
Poverty in Massachusetts by Age (with Ferry Cadet and Dinghong Mei), Center for Social Policy Publications (2011)
Massachusetts has lower poverty rates compared to the US average. But, like the US, child...
Poverty in Massachusetts by Education Status: Population 25 Years and Older (with Ferry Cadet and Dinghong Mei), Center for Social Policy Publications (2011)
Massachusetts has lower poverty rates compared to the US average. But, like the US, the...
Poverty in Massachusetts by Ethnicity (with Ferry Cadet and Dinghong Mei), Center for Social Policy Publications (2011)
At just under 29%, the poverty rate for Hispanics is Massachusetts far exceed the poverty...
Poverty in Massachusetts by Gender (with Ferry Cadet and Dinghong Mei), Center for Social Policy Publications (2011)
Massachusetts has lower poverty rates compared to US average. But, like the US, female poverty...
Poverty in Massachusetts by Household Status (with Ferry Cadet and Dinghong Mei), Center for Social Policy Publications (2011)
Household status matters in terms of poverty. People living in married-couples families are much less...
Working Papers
Low-Wage and Low-Income Workers In The U.S., 1979-2009 (with Michael Carr), Center for Social Policy Publications (2012)
Three decades of stagnating earnings for bottom deciles of male wage earners and 1990s anti-poverty...
Why it’s Harder (and Different) for Single Mothers: Gender, Motherhood, Labor Markets and Public Work Supports, Center for Social Policy Publications (2009)
This paper focuses on low-wage work and single mothers. I begin with a typical example...