The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

The discontinuation of the Biden administration’s monthly payments of the child tax credit could leave millions of American families without enough food on the table, according to our new study in JAMA Network Open. The first missed payment on Jan. 15, 2022, left families that had come to rely on them wondering how they would make ends meet, according to many news reports.

The American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed in March 2021, made significant changes to the existing child tax credit. It increased the size of the credit by 50% or more, depending on a child’s age, to either $3,000 or $3,600 per year. It also made more low-income families eligible and paid half of this money out as a monthly “advance” payment.

Biden’s Build Back Better plan calls for a second year of an expanded child tax credit disbursed monthly. But that package of measures stalled in the Senate after passing the House in November 2021. As a result, the monthly advance payments of the child tax credit that American families with children had been receiving since July 2021 were left hanging in the balance.

Nearly 60 million families with children received the first payment, which was sent out in July 2021. The payments were widely credited with bringing about huge declines in poverty and malnutrition. Our study found that the introduction of these advance payments was associated with a 26% drop in the share of American households with children without enough food.

We used nationally representative data from over 585,000 responses to the Census Household Pulse Survey from January through August 2021 to assess how the introduction of the child tax credit advance payments affected food insufficiency in the weeks following the first payment on July 15, 2021. Food insufficiency is a measure of whether a household has enough food to eat. It is a much narrower measure than food insecurity, which is a more comprehensive measure based on 18 questions used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Importantly, we were able to separate the effect of these payments from other types of support, like the use of food pantries, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, unemployment benefits and COVID-19 stimulus payments.

Why it matters

Food insufficiency spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among families with children: It rose from 3% among all households in December 2019 to 18% in December 2020. Even after many, if not most, U.S. families received pandemic stimulus checks and other benefits, food insufficiency still hovered around 14% in June 2021. But following the first advance payment, from July 23 to August 2, 2021, food insufficiency among households with children fell drastically, to 10%.

This support is ending just as the omicron variant of COVID-19 is leaving many families without work, child care and, in many places, child care via in-person instruction at school.

All these factors are leading to lower income and, where school is virtual once again, creating the need for more meals at home. Other analyses of the Census Household Pulse Survey have found that most families were using the child tax credit advance payments for food and other necessities, such as housing and utilities.

What’s next

We are going to look further into how the advance payments affected low-income families through the rest of 2021, analyzing which groups of Americans saw the most benefit and what happened once the advance payments expired in 2022.

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The full impact of the expansion of the child tax credit for the 2021 tax year has not yet been seen either. Eligible families will get the rest of that money, equal to all six monthly payments combined, when they file their 2021 tax returns this year.

Paul Shafer, Assistant Professor of Health Law, Policy and Management, Boston University and Katherine Gutierrez, PhD Candidate in Economics, University of New Mexico

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

My Facebook feed exploded shortly after noon on Dec. 20, 2021, with news from friends and family in northern California: A “big one!” The 6.2 magnitude earthquake they’d just experienced had its epicenter on the coast near Petrolia.

Yet many social media posts weren’t focused on the earthquake itself, but rather the alert sent to cellphones seconds before – or, for some, just as – major shaking began.

The ShakeAlert system is a remarkable technology, years in the making. It has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives in areas where high-magnitude earthquakes occur by providing a few seconds’ warning – enough time for people to take basic safety precautions. Marvelous as it is, though, ShakeAlert saves lives only if people understand what to do when they receive such an alert – and do it.

I’m part of an interdisciplinary group that includes psychologists like me and other social scientists, natural hazards experts, seismologists, geophysicists and communication and education specialists whose goal is to design earthquake preparedness and response systems that optimize safe outcomes. Some of us are working together to analyze video footage of various earthquakes posted to social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Videos during the Petrolia-centered earthquake are the first we’ve seen of what people do – or don’t do – when they receive a ShakeAlert-powered alert. The footage suggests we have more work to do.

Detection and warning of imminent earthquakes

ShakeAlert depends on a massive network of seismic detectors distributed around the West Coast that pick up initial earthquake shaking.

For people near the epicenter, the time it takes to process the data and send an alert may mean it arrives just as, or possibly even seconds after, major shaking begins. Even this roughly simultaneous notice is valuable, as it helps people realize what is happening, which often isn’t obvious.

For those further away from a quake’s epicenter, an alert may arrive seconds, or even tens of seconds, before strong shaking. That’s enough time to automatically shut down or alter the operations of key systems – for example, to slow or stop trains, control equipment involved in delicate medical procedures, or electrical grids. It’s also enough time to prepare mentally, as well as to take potentially life-saving protective action.

To maximize your chances of coming out of a major earthquake alive and intact, most experts recommend in most cases – for California, Oregon and Washington – that you “Drop, Cover, and Hold On,” or DCHO for short. The alert message appearing on your cellphone reminds you what to do.

ShakeAlert is the only earthquake early warning system for the public in the U.S. It went live in Oregon in March 2021, and in May it expanded to the entire U.S. West Coast. The system sends alerts via a group of delivery partners. For instance, Google Android phones display alerts via their operating system. Depending where people live, they can install alert apps – MyShake, QuakeAlert USA or San Diego Emergency ShakeReadySD – to their smartphone. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency system that sends emergency messages like Amber Alerts also issues earthquake warnings.

Considerable prior research helped to shape the content conveyed in ShakeAlert-powered alerts, as well as key messaging that occurs right after alerts. Getting all of this right is crucial, and it’s still a work in progress.

What people do before and during quakes

Until recently, researchers have had to rely primarily on after-the-fact interviews or “Did You Feel It?” post-earthquake surveys to learn what people remembered doing during an earthquake.

In the last several years, closed-circuit TV footage has started to reveal how people really respond to high-intensity shaking. These recordings aren’t muddled by individuals’ understandably imperfect memories of a chaotic and stressful event. Though people frequently report having taken protective actions such as “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” during an earthquake, analyses of CCTV footage to date show that DCHO is, as yet, actually quite rare.

There are a few encouraging exceptions, though. For instance, CCTV footage from the 2018 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Anchorage, Alaska, shows a teacher and students in one middle-school classroom collectively enacting DCHO immediately and flawlessly.

The Petrolia earthquake videos offer the first chance to see if ShakeAlert-powered messages change how people behave before, during and even after a major earthquake. So far, in the footage we’ve seen, people noticed the alert yet did nothing relevant to protecting themselves.

In fact, no one in any of these videos from Dec. 20 undertook “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” precautions, regardless of whether, or when, they received an alert. Many people just stayed where they were, showed the alert on their phones to others and excitedly watched as objects swayed and crashed to the floor.

Frozen in the face of an emergency

My colleagues and I are hoping that a better understanding of what people actually do during major earth shaking will suggest ways to tweak the alerts so they inspire people to take safer actions. It’s a big challenge because doing nothing when an earthquake begins appears to be very common.

A 2021 survey conducted in both Seattle and Sendai, Japan, found that stopping and staying put was the dominant response to major earth shaking, even though it puts people at risk of serious injury from falling or being hit by falling objects. There are several likely reasons.

A major earthquake is a novel experience for many people, and often they simply may not know what to do. In addition, there are potential barriers to carrying out “Drop, Cover, and Hold On.” Age, disability and high body mass can make dropping to the floor and getting under cover problematic, though there are inclusive ways to DCHO.

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Even when people do know what to do in an emergency, evidence suggests they may feel self-conscious or embarrassed about taking action. Classic social science research points to how contagious it can be, in the face of a variety of emergencies, to do nothing, creating cascading paralysis for everyone present.

By dropping, covering and holding on right when you receive an alert, you might unleash similar protective action in others nearby, possibly saving them, as well as yourself, from injury or death. Seen that way, doing DCHO when you receive an alert – despite the potential for embarrassment – is actually a form of everyday heroism.

Dare A. Baldwin, Full Professor, Psychology and Clark Honors College, University of Oregon

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.