Working families
Welfare Rules, Incentives, and Family Structure
Robert Moffitt, Brian Phelan & Anne Winkler
NBER Working Paper, June 2015
Abstract:
In this study we provide a new examination of the incentive effects of welfare rules on family structure. Focusing on the AFDC and TANF programs, we first emphasize that the literature, by and large, has assumed that the rules of those programs make a key distinction between married women and cohabiting women, but this is not a correct interpretation. In fact, it is the biological relationship between the children and any male in the household that primarily determines how the family is treated. In an empirical analysis conducted over the period 1996 to 2004 that correctly matches family structure outcomes to welfare rules, we find significant effects of several welfare policies on family structure, both work-related policies and family-oriented policies, effects that are stronger than in most past work. Many of our significant effects show that these rules led to a decrease in single motherhood and an increase in biological partnering. For all of our results, our findings indicate that the impact of welfare rules crucially hinges on the biological relationship of the male partner to the children in the household.
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Single-Parent Households and Children's Educational Achievement: A State-Level Analysis
Paul Amato, Sarah Patterson & Brett Beattie
Social Science Research, September 2015, Pages 191-202
Abstract:
Although many studies have examined associations between family structure and children's educational achievement at the individual level, few studies have considered how the increase in single-parent households may have affected children's educational achievement at the population level. We examined changes in the percentage of children living with single parents between 1990 and 2011 and state mathematics and reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Regression models with state and year fixed effects revealed that changes in the percentage of children living with single parents were not associated with test scores. Increases in maternal education, however, were associated with improvements in children's test scores during this period. These results do not support the notion that increases in single parenthood have had serious consequences for U.S. children's school achievement.
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Young Adult Outcomes and the Life-Course Penalties of Parental Incarceration
Daniel Mears & Sonja Siennick
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, forthcoming
Objectives: The transition to adulthood can be challenging, especially for children of incarcerated parents. Drawing on reentry and life-course scholarship, we argue that parental incarceration may adversely affect multiple life outcomes for children as they progress from adolescence into adulthood and that such effects may persist from early young adulthood into late young adulthood.
Methods: The study uses propensity score matching analyses of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data (N = 12,844).
Results: Analyses identified harmful effects of parental incarceration on many life domains, including criminal behavior, mental health, illegal drug use, education, earnings, and intimate relationships. These effects typically surfaced by early young adulthood and continued into late young adulthood.
Conclusions: The results suggest that parental incarceration constitutes a significant turning point in the lives of young people and underscore the importance of life-course perspectives for understanding incarceration effects. They also illustrate that formal punishment policies may create harms that potentially offset intended benefits.
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Lisa Muftić, Leana Bouffard & Gaylene Armstrong
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, forthcoming
Objectives: This note examines the relationship between maternal incarceration and adverse outcomes for offspring in early adulthood.
Methods: Utilizing data derived from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, a series of multivariate models are conducted to examine the impact maternal incarceration has on criminal justice involvement among young adults. To control for selection effects that may be associated with maternal imprisonment, propensity score matching is utilized.
Results: Respondents whose mothers had served time in prison were significantly more likely to have an adult arrest, conviction, and incarceration, even after controlling for important demographic factors and correlates of criminal behavior. This effect persisted following matching.
Conclusions: Maternal incarceration had a substantial effect on the offspring's adult involvement in the criminal justice system. These findings bolster contentions regarding the unintended consequences of maternal incarceration that include long-term collateral damage to their children.
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Dohoon Lee & Sara McLanahan
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
A growing literature documents the importance of family instability for child wellbeing. In this article, we use longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the impacts of family instability on children's cognitive and socioemotional development in early and middle childhood. We extend existing research in several ways: (1) by distinguishing between the number and types of family structure changes; (2) by accounting for time-varying as well as time-constant confounding; and (3) by assessing racial/ethnic and gender differences in family instability effects. Our results indicate that family instability has a causal effect on children's development, but the effect depends on the type of change, the outcome assessed, and the population examined. Generally speaking, transitions out of a two-parent family are more negative for children's development than transitions into a two-parent family. The effect of family instability is more pronounced for children's socioemotional development than for their cognitive achievement. For socioemotional development, transitions out of a two-parent family are more negative for white children, whereas transitions into a two-parent family are more negative for Hispanic children. These findings suggest that future research should pay more attention to the type of family structure transition and to population heterogeneity.
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Alexander Jensen & Susan McHale
Journal of Family Psychology, June 2015, Pages 469-478
Abstract:
To illuminate processes that contribute to the development of sibling differences, this study examined cross-lagged links between parents' beliefs about sibling differences in academic ability and differences between siblings' grade point averages (GPAs), and cross-lagged links between differences in siblings' GPAs and sibling differences in academic interests. Data were collected from mothers, fathers, firstborn youth (M age at Time 1 = 15.71, SD = 1.07), and secondborn youth (M age at Time 1 = 13.18, SD = 1.29) from 388 European American families on 3 annual occasions. Findings revealed that, after controlling for siblings' average grades and prior differences in performance, parents' beliefs about sibling differences in academic ability predicted differences in performance such that youth rated by parents as relatively more competent than their sibling earned relatively higher grades the following year. Siblings' relative school performance, however, did not predict parents' beliefs about differences between siblings' competencies. Further, after controlling for average interests and grades, sibling differences in GPA predicted differences in siblings' interests such that youth who had better grades than their siblings reported relatively stronger academic interests the following year. Differences in interest, however, did not predict sibling differences in GPA. Findings are discussed in terms the role of sibling dynamics in family socialization.
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The Intergenerational Transmission of Schooling: Are Mothers Really Less Important than Fathers?
Vikesh Amin, Petter Lundborg & Dan-Olof Rooth
Economics of Education Review, August 2015, Pages 100-117
Abstract:
There is a "puzzle" in the literature on the intergenerational transmission of schooling, where twin studies emphasize the importance of fathers' schooling, whereas IV-studies often emphasize the importance of mothers. We provide new evidence on this "puzzle" using register based Swedish data on the largest sample of twins used so far in the literature. In contrast to previous twin studies, our results confirm the importance of mothers' schooling. We also provide the first twin-based evidence of possible role model effects, where our estimates suggest that mother's schooling matters more than father's schooling for daughters schooling. One additional year of mothers' schooling raises daughter's schooling by a tenth of a year, which is similar to some of the previous IV-based estimates in the literature. Finally, we bring in new US twin data that for the first time allows a replication of previous twin-based estimates of the intergenerational transmission of schooling in the US. The results show no statistically significant effect of mothers' and fathers' schooling on children's schooling. Our results have implications for assessing the efficiency of policies that subsidize the schooling of men and women and are in contrast to most previous findings in the twin literature.
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Moiz Bhai
University of Illinois Working Paper, February 2015
Abstract:
Using a twin research design that exploits exogenous gender variation in dizygotic twins, this paper credibly identifies the effect of sibling sex composition on schooling, earnings, health, and labor supply. Women born with a male co-twin have higher earnings, schooling, labor force participation, and better health than women born with a female co-twin. Men born with a female co-twin, on the other hand, have higher rates of ever smoking but differences on all other outcomes are statistically indistinguishable from zero. Family characteristics provide a limited explanation of the sibling sex composition effect.
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Patrick Fowler, David Henry & Katherine Marcal
Social Science Research, September 2015, Pages 364-374
Abstract:
This study investigated the longitudinal effects of family structure changes and housing instability in adolescence on functioning in the transition to adulthood. A model examined the influence of household composition changes and mobility in context of ethnic differences and sociodemographic risks. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health measured household and residential changes over a 12-month period among a nationally representative sample of adolescents. Assessments in young adulthood measured rates of depression, criminal activity, and smoking. Findings suggested housing mobility in adolescence predicted poorer functioning across outcomes in young adulthood, and youth living in multigenerational homes exhibited greater likelihood to be arrested than adolescents in single-generation homes. However, neither family structure changes nor its interaction with residential instability or ethnicity related to young adult outcomes. Findings emphasized the unique influence of housing mobility in the context of dynamic household compositions.
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Sook Ning Chua & Frédérick Philippe
Personality and Individual Differences, November 2015, Pages 348-353
Abstract:
In this paper we examined the influence of father autonomy support on protesting behavior. Drawing from Relational Model Theory and Self-determination Theory, we hypothesized that individuals' perception and interactions with authority figures are shaped by their experiences with their fathers. When people experience their fathers as empathetic and caring, they are more likely to view other authority figures positively and make benevolent interpretations of their actions. We found support for our hypothesis in two studies conducted in Malaysia and Canada with self-reported engagement in political causes. As expected, perceived father autonomy support was related to positive perception of the government and less protesting against the government. Overall, the present paper provides evidence that children's internalized representations of their fathers are related to intentions and behaviors to change the social systems.
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Kayla Anderson et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Increased utilization of in vitro fertilization (IVF) to treat infertility has resulted in a growing twin birthrate. Despite early childhood risks, twins have fewer psychosocial problems in middle childhood than singleton children. This study proposes that parents' conformity expectations for children have differential effects on parent-child relationships for twin and singleton children, which indirectly explains twins' more optimum psychosocial adjustment. Parental conformity expectations, parent-child relationship satisfaction, and children's emotional, behavioral, and attention problems were assessed in a sample of 288 6- to 12-year-old IVF-conceived twins and singletons. Overall, parents of twins had higher expectations for child conformity to parent rules than singleton parents. Path models demonstrate that twin status and parental expectations for child conformity interact to influence parent-child relationships, and this interaction indirectly accounted for differences in twins' and singletons' psychosocial adjustment. Findings suggest parenting constructs have differential influences on the association between twin status and parent-child relationships. Parenting research, predominantly conducted with singletons, should be reexamined before applying existing research to twin children and their families.
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The impact of early intervention on the school readiness of children born to teenage mothers
Amber Brown
Journal of Early Childhood Research, June 2015, Pages 181-195
Abstract:
This study examined the effect of participation in the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters program on the school readiness of children born to teenage mothers versus children born to traditional-age mothers participating in the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters program. A 45-item survey was collected from the kindergarten teachers of both the children of teenage mothers in the Texas Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters program and a matched control group. The survey consisted of five subsections: socioemotional development, approaches to learning, physical development, language development, and general knowledge. Results of independent samples t-tests indicated no statistical difference between the two groups. These results seem to suggest that the curriculum used by the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters program, which focuses on supporting parents as their child's first teacher, helps to mitigate any potential negative effects on being a child of a teenage mother.
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Housing and Household Instability
Matthew Desmond & Kristin Perkins
Urban Affairs Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research attempting to estimate the effects of residential instability typically overlooks other consequential changes within households that may be coincident with moving. Drawing on novel data of renting households in Milwaukee that recently relocated (N = 569), this article establishes the frequency at which residential or housing instability is accompanied by household instability: changes in the composition of adults living under the same roof. We find that most moves are accompanied by household instability and that households with young children are significantly more likely to experience household instability. These findings imply that researchers attempting to isolate the effects of residential instability, especially for children, should account for the possible influence of household change.
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The effect of child support on the labor supply of custodial mothers participating in TANF
Laura Cuesta & Maria Cancian
Children and Youth Services Review, July 2015, Pages 49-56
Abstract:
Child support is a critical source of income, especially for the growing proportion of children born to unmarried mothers. Current social policy supports custodial parent employment (e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit [EITC] and other work supports have largely taken the place of an entitlement to cash assistance for single mothers of young children). Given many single mothers' limited earnings potential, child support from noncustodial fathers is also important. This raises questions about the effects of child support on custodial mothers' labor supply, and whether policies that increase child support receipt will thereby discourage mothers' employment. This paper addresses these questions, taking advantage of data from a statewide randomized experiment conducted in Wisconsin. Unlike previous nonexperimental research, we do not find any negative effect of child support on the likelihood to work for pay or the number of hours worked in a given week. Recent U.S. social welfare policies have focused on increasing both custodial mothers' child support collections and their labor supply. The results suggest that these may be compatible policies; the absence of a negative labor supply effect strengthens the potential antipoverty effectiveness of child support.
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Do Social Resources Protect Against Lower Quality of Life Among Diverse Young Adolescents?
Sarah Scott et al.
Journal of Early Adolescence, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined whether social resources from the family and the community moderate the risk associated with low socioeconomic status (SES) for reduced quality of life (QL) among youth across racial/ethnic groups. Data were from 4,824 fifth-grade youth (age Formula = 11.1, SD = 0.6; 49% females) in the Healthy PassagesT study (2004-2006) located in Birmingham, Alabama; Los Angeles County, California; and Houston, Texas. Youth reported their QL using the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory Version 4.0 and the Global Self-Worth subscale of the Self-Perception Profile and their status for hypothesized protective social mechanisms. Overall, family cohesion, parental nurturance, other adult, and peer support were positively associated with QL across racial/ethnic groups. There were few significant interactions, but all suggested that higher SES youth benefited more than lower SES youth. In fact, family cohesion among African American youth and other adult support among Hispanic youth differentiated QL at higher, but not lower SES. Further research should examine other risk contexts and seek to inform targeted prevention efforts.