Employment Influence
Making Connections neighborhood families who experienced part-time employment or unemployment were more likely to rely on family and friends to deal with financial emergencies than families who had full time jobs.
This report analyzes survey data about the use of financial services by families living in the 10 Making Connections cities across the United States. It evaluates resident responses by their use of bank services, check cashing services, payday lenders, pawn shops and credit cards, as well as how they would respond to financial emergencies. It correlates how factors, such as race and ethnicity, immigrant status, income, employment level and neighborhood of residence, influenced the use of financial services.
Making Connections neighborhood families who experienced part-time employment or unemployment were more likely to rely on family and friends to deal with financial emergencies than families who had full time jobs.
Neither residents nor families with full-time employment were likely to use pawn shops or payday lenders to deal with a financial emergency.
Income level is the single strongest predictor of household bank use.
The primary reason respondencts did not use financial services was because they did not need them. Few respondents cited cost, bad service or geography as the reasons for not using financial services.
Poor, unemployed, Hispanic households use banks at significantly lower levels than non-poor, fully employed, white households.
Whites and Asian immigrants were more likely to have used a bank and less likely to have used a check casher. Hispanic immigrants and U.S.-born Hispanics were the least likely to have used a bank and, along with Blacks, were more likely to have used a check casher.
Resident responses indicate that low-income families surveyed were more likely to use a mix of financial services, including commercial banks and check cashing services, when compared to residents in the surrounding county. A majority of residents in the initiative neighborhoods used commercial banking services, according to the survey results.
Caption: Household financial service use by Making Connections neighborhood families compared to those in surrounding county
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