Ties in Tough Times: How Social Capital Helps Lower-Income Jewish Parents Weather the Economic Hardship of COVID-19

Contemporary Jewry https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-021-09385-z Ties in Tough Times: How Social Capital Helps Lower‑Income Jewish Parents Weather the Economic Hardship of COVID‑19 Ilana M. Horwitz1 · Sasha Lascar2 Received: 21 October 2020 / Accepted: 28 June 2021 © Springer Nature B.V. 2021 Abstract In this exploratory study, we examined how social ties helped lower-income Jewish parents in the Greater Philadelphia area weather the COVID-19 pandemic. We interviewed 36 parents who self-identified as Jewish, had at least one school-age child, and earned less than the median Jewish household income in the Philadelphia area. We analyzed the data through the lens of social capital, focusing on three forms: bonding, bridging, and linking social capital. Unlike in weather-related disasters, where social capital yields crucial physical help, the social distancing requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic changed how social capital functions. Parents with strong social ties in the Jewish community were able to connect to people and institutions of power, such as rabbis and Jewish organizations, who provided valuable material resources while families sheltered in place. We describe how people develop relational ties by doing something with and for a social group, and discuss how extended periods of social distancing can threaten the flow of social capital. Keywords COVID-19 · Social capital · Jewish Federation · Low-income · Parents · Interviews Introduction In March 2020, social activity in the United States came to a halt as millions of parents and their children sheltered in place to avoid spreading and contracting COVID-19. Tanya1 was one of these parents. In the ensuing four months, Tanya, her husband, and their six children barely left their Philadelphia home. Prior to 1 All names are pseudonyms. * Ilana M. Horwitz 1 Jewish Studies Department, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA 2 Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA 13 Vol.:(0123456789) I. M. Horwitz, S. Lascar COVID-19, Tanya, who has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, worked half days as a teacher, earning about $12,500 over the course of the academic year. She also earned an additional $5000 a year through babysitting. When COVID-19 hit, Tanya’s school paid her through the end of the school year, but she lost all of her babysitting income. Her reduced wages proved to be especially difficult as she had already taken off several months in early 2020 due to an illness and had just resumed working and earning an income. COVID-19 did not affect her husband’s job as a food distributor (where he earns about $25,000 a year), yet the pandemic still left them with less than $40,000 to shelter and feed their family of eight. Tanya was not alone. As businesses shut down, millions of Americans became unemployed. Across the United States, the impact of COVID-19 has fallen most heavily on lower-income adults—a group that was feeling significant financial pressure well before the current crisis. In April 2020, 43% of US. adults said that they or someone in their household had lost a job or taken a pay cut due to the outbreak, up from 33% in the latter half of March. Among lower-income adults, an even higher share (52%) said they or someone in their household had experienced this type of job upheaval (Pew Research Center 2020). In addition to being among the hardest hit by the economic fallout from COVID19, lower-income adults like Tanya were less prepared to withstand a financial shock than those with higher incomes. Only about one in four (23%) say they have set aside rainy day funds that would cover their expenses for three months in case of an emergency, compared with 48% of middle-income and 75% of upper-income adults (Pew Research Center 2020). In April 2020, over half (53%) of lower-income adults expected to have trouble paying some of their bills that month. Most of these lowerincome adults would not be able to cover their expenses for three months by borrowing money, using savings, selling assets, or borrowing from friends or family (Pew Research Center 2020).2 The long-lasting nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a multi-month shelter-in-place order, meant that low-income adults were at high risk of experiencing housing and food insecurity. Like millions of Americans, Tanya could not turn to her parents, siblings, or friends for financial support. But unlike most Americans, Tanya had non-familial social ties through her Jewish social networks. How did social ties to other Jews help Tanya and other low-income Jews weather the COVID-19 pandemic? Although religious and ethnic organizations like Jewish federations are one potential source of financial support for low-income Jews during economic disasters wrought by events like a pandemic—especially those Jews who cannot turn to friends and family—such groups have received very little attention in the literature. In a recent literature review, Sheikhi et al. (2020) found that religious organizations play a vital role in providing disaster relief to communities after weather-related disasters, which generally decimate physical infrastructure in confined regions. However, much less is known about how religious (and ethnic) organizations might 2 The same 2020 Pew research study found that middle-income and upper-income adults were better prepared to weather the financial crisis: about a quarter of middle-income adults and only 11% of those in the upper-income tier expected to have trouble paying their April 2020 bills (Pew Research Center 2020). 13 Ties in Tough Times: How Social Capital Helps Lower-Income… support people through a pandemic-induced economic crisis affecting the entire nation. We also know very little about the role that Jewish organizations play in providing disaster relief, as most studies of religious-based disaster recovery focus on churches (e.g., Cain and Barthelemy 2008; Rivera and Nickels 2014). Finally, existing studies tend to examine the supply side of disaster relief rather than the demand side. For example, Holcombe (2010) interviewed religious leaders to investigate how Houston-based religious congregations provided aid after Hurricane Katrina. Currently, we know very little about the people who need aid and what it takes to get such aid. To begin filling the gap in the literature, we look at the demand side of economic relief during a pandemic by examining lower-income Jewish parents in a large metropolitan area. We interviewed 36 parents who self-identified as Jewish, had at least one school-age child, and had a household income of $75,000 or less (which is below the median Jewish household income in Philadelphia). This exploratory study tells the story of how social ties helped lower-income Jews in tough times. Social Capital Social capital exists in the relations between and among people. It describes the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other social structures (...truncated)