Parent Time
Consequences of Teenage Childbearing on Child Outcomes in the United States
Devon Gorry
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
Children of teen mothers have worse academic, labor market, and behavioral outcomes in the United States, but it is not clear whether these poor outcomes are caused by having a young mother or driven by selection into teen motherhood. Understanding the reasoning behind poor child outcomes is important for designing effective policies to improve child trajectories. Simple correlations using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Children and Young Adults (NLSY79CY) confirm that outcomes for children of teenage mothers are worse relative to children of older mothers. These negative relationships persist after controlling for background variables or including family fixed effects, though the magnitudes are attenuated. However, these approaches fail to fully account for selection into teen motherhood. To overcome selection, I employ an empirical strategy that relies on miscarriages to put bounds on the causal effects of teen childbearing. These bounds show that teen childbearing among mothers who choose to give birth does not cause adverse outcomes for children.
Face processing in the infant brain after pandemic lockdown
Tristan Yates, Cameron Ellis & Nicholas Turk-Browne
Developmental Psychobiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The role of visual experience in the development of face processing has long been debated. We present a new angle on this question through a serendipitous study that cannot easily be repeated. Infants viewed short blocks of faces during fMRI in a repetition suppression task. The same identity was presented multiple times in half of the blocks (repeat condition) and different identities were presented once each in the other half (novel condition). In adults, the fusiform face area (FFA) tends to show greater neural activity for novel versus repeat blocks in such designs, suggesting that it can distinguish same versus different face identities. As part of an ongoing study, we collected data before the COVID-19 pandemic and after an initial local lockdown was lifted. The resulting sample of 12 infants (9–24 months) divided equally into pre- and post-lockdown groups with matching ages and data quantity/quality. The groups had strikingly different FFA responses: pre-lockdown infants showed repetition suppression (novel > repeat), whereas post-lockdown infants showed the opposite (repeat > novel), often referred to as repetition enhancement. These findings provide speculative evidence that altered visual experience during the lockdown, or other correlated environmental changes, may have affected face processing in the infant brain.
Families, Labor Markets, and Policy
Stefania Albanesi, Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo
NBER Working Paper, November 2022
Abstract:
Using comparable data for 24 countries since the 1970s, we document gender convergence in schooling, employment and earnings, marriage delay and the accompanying decline in fertility, and the large remaining gaps in labor market outcomes, especially among parents. A model of time allocation illustrates how the specialization of spouses in home or market production responds to preferences, comparative advantages and public policies. We draw lessons from existing evidence on the impacts of family policies on women's careers and children's wellbeing. There is to date little or no evidence of beneficial effects of longer parental leave (or fathers' quotas) on maternal participation and earnings. In most cases longer leave delays mothers' return to work, without long-lasting consequences on their careers. More generous childcare funding instead encourages female participation whenever subsidized childcare replaces maternal childcare. Impacts on child development depend on counterfactual childcare arrangements and tend to be more beneficial for disadvantaged households. In-work benefits targeted to low-earners have clear positive impacts on lone mothers' employment and negligible impacts on other groups. While most of this literature takes policy as exogenous, political economy aspects of policy adoption help understand the interplay between societal changes, family policies and gender equality.
Examining the effects of antidiscrimination laws on children in the foster care and adoption systems
Netta Barak-Corren, Yoav Kan-Tor & Nelson Tebbe
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, December 2022, Pages 1003-1066
Abstract:
How are children affected when states prohibit child welfare agencies from discriminating against same-sex couples who wish to foster or adopt? This question stands at the heart of a debate between governments that seek to impose such antidiscrimination requirements and child welfare agencies that challenge them on religious freedom grounds. Yet until now there has been no reliable evidence on whether and how antidiscrimination rules for these agencies impact children. We have conducted the first nationwide study of how child outcomes vary when states adopt such antidiscrimination rules for child welfare agencies. Analyzing 20 years of child welfare data (2000–2019), we estimate that state antidiscrimination rules both (1) modestly increase children's success at finding foster and permanent homes, and (2) greatly reduce the average time to place children in such homes. These effects vary among subgroups, such that children who are most likely to find a home are generally not affected by state antidiscrimination requirements, whereas children who are least likely to find a home (primarily older children and children with various disabilities) benefit substantially from antidiscrimination measures. We estimate that the effect of antidiscrimination rules is equivalent to 15,525 additional children finding permanent homes and 360,000 additional children finding foster homes, nationwide, over a period of 20 years. Overall, the project offers two key contributions: First, it provides empirical grounding for some of the most heated constitutional and political battles of the culture wars. Second, it advances empirical legal studies by bringing machine learning causal inference to law.
The effects of owner-occupied housing on student outcomes: Evidence from NYC
Sarah Cordes, Amy Ellen Schwartz & Brian Elbel
Regional Science and Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The view of owning a home as integral to the “American dream” is enshrined in numerous policies designed to promote homeownership. Whether or not these policies are worth their cost is unclear and depends, in part, on the extent to which owner-occupied housing (OOH) confers socially important benefits. Yet identifying the effects of OOH is complicated, not only due to standard concerns about selection, but also because OOH tends to be located in neighborhoods with better amenities (including schools) and is often synonymous with living in a single-family home. In this paper we use rich, longitudinal student-level data to examine whether students in OOH have better academic and health outcomes than those in renter occupied housing (ROH). We address concerns about selection using student fixed effects and a rich set of individual, building, and neighborhood controls. We find that there is notable variation in both the characteristics and size of OOH and the types of students who live in OOH in NYC. While raw differences show that students who live in OOH have better outcomes—they are less likely to be chronically absent, obese, or overweight and have higher standardized test scores—much of this disparity is explained by differences in the students who select into OOH. In models where we account for selection into OOH and building type with rich controls and student fixed effects, we find small positive effects of moving into OOH on attendance and math scores with no consistent evidence of any impacts of OOH on BMI or obesity, suggesting that policies that promote homeownership might be oversold.
The role of maternal preconception adiposity in human offspring sex and sex ratio
Elizabeth DeVilbiss et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Methods: Within a prospective preconception cohort nested within a randomized controlled trial based at 4 U.S. clinical sites, logistic regression estimated odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for male:female sex ratio and log-identity regression estimated risk differences (RDs) and 95% CIs for male and female live birth by preconception adiposity measures. Inverse probability weights accounted for potential selection bias.
Results: Among 603 women attempting pregnancy, there were meaningful reductions in sex ratio for the highest category of each adiposity measure. The lowest sex ratios were observed for obesity (BMI≥30 kg/m2) (OR = 0.48, 95% CI 0.26, 0.88) relative to normal BMI, and the top tertiles (T3) of leptin and skinfolds (OR = 0.50, 95% CI 0.32, 0.80 and 0.50, 95% CI 0.32, 0.79, respectively) relative to the lowest tertiles. Reductions were driven by 11-15 fewer male live births per 100 women (RD = -15, 95% CI -23, -6.7 for obesity, -11, 95% CI -20, -3.2 for T3 leptin and -11, 95% CI -19, -3.3 for T3 skinfolds).