Domestic Labor
Finance and Children's Academic Performance
Qing Hu et al.
NBER Working Paper, January 2020
Abstract:
What is the impact of regulatory reforms that enhance credit market efficiency on children’s human capital? Using a parent-child panel dataset, we find that such reforms reduced children’s academic performance in low-income families. Consistent with the view that financial development entices low-income parents to substitute out of childrearing and into employment with adverse effects on children’s education, we find that among low-income families, regulatory reforms: increased mother’s employment hours, reduced parental supervision and parent-child discussions about school and college, and had bigger adverse effects when mothers were not already working full-time and grandparents were not living with the child.
Childhood Adoption and Mental Health in Adulthood: The Role of Gene-Environment Correlations and Interactions in the UK Biobank
Kelli Lehto et al.
Biological Psychiatry, forthcoming
Methods: Here, we explored associations between childhood adoption and mental health-related outcomes in midlife in 243,797 UK Biobank participants (n adopted = 3151). We used linkage disequilibrium score regression and polygenic risk scores for depressive symptoms, schizophrenia, neuroticism, and subjective well-being to address potential genetic confounding (gene-environment correlations) and gene-environment interactions. As outcomes, we explored depressive symptoms, bipolar disorder, neuroticism, loneliness, and mental health-related socioeconomic and psychosocial measures in adoptees compared with nonadopted participants.
Results: Adoptees were slightly worse off on almost all mental, socioeconomic, and psychosocial measures. Each standard deviation increase in polygenic risk for depressive symptoms, schizophrenia, and neuroticism was associated with 6%, 5%, and 6% increase in the odds of being adopted, respectively. Significant genetic correlations between adoption status and depressive symptoms, major depression, and schizophrenia were observed. No evidence for gene-environment interaction between genetic risk and adoption on mental health was found.
The Nurture Effects of Multidimensional Parental Skills on College Attainment
Jiaming Soh & Kegon Teng Kok Tan
Journal of Human Capital, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate the nurture effects of parental cognitive and socio-emotional skills on child college attainment. By studying a sample of adopted children in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we identify non-genetic effects of parental skills on college attainment. We find that parental IQ and Openness act positively on child college attainment, while Agreeableness has a negative impact. A 1 s.d. difference in each of the skills translates to a 5-6 p.p. difference in college attainment, similar to the effect size of income. Finally we find that the nurture effects of IQ and Agreeableness are largely driven by fathers, whilst that of Openness is driven by mothers.
The Economic Consequences of Being Denied an Abortion
Sarah Miller, Laura Wherry & Diana Greene Foster
NBER Working Paper, January 2020
Abstract:
Restrictions on abortion are pervasive, yet relatively little is known about the financial and economic impact of being denied an abortion on pregnant women who seek one. This paper evaluates the economic consequences of being denied an abortion on the basis of the gestational age of the pregnancy. Our analysis relies on new linkages to ten years of administrative credit report data for participants in the Turnaway Study, the first study to collect high-quality, longitudinal data on women receiving or being denied a wanted abortion in the United States. Some women had pregnancies close to the facility's gestational age limit, but below it, and received a wanted abortion (Near Limit Group). A second group of women had pregnancies just over the facility's gestational age limit and were turned away without receiving an abortion (Turnaway Group). Using these linked data, we compare differences in credit report outcomes for the two groups of women over time using an event study design. We find evidence of a large and persistent increase in financial distress for the women who were denied an abortion that is sustained for the 6 years following the intended abortion.
Racial/Ethnic Differences in Unwanted Births: Moderation by Sexual Orientation
Bethany Everett et al.
Journal of Marriage and Family, forthcoming
Method: Data come from the pregnancy roster data in Waves 4 and Wave 5 subsample in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We used live births as the unit of analysis (n = 8,527) and multilevel logistic regression models to account for clustering of births within women. Women were asked if they “wanted” to be pregnant at the time of pregnancy. The authors conducted models stratified by race/ethnicity as well as models stratified by sexual identity.
Results: Among White women, SMW [sexual minority women] were more likely to describe their births as unwanted than were their heterosexual counterparts. Conversely, among Black and Latina women, SMW were less likely to describe their births as unwanted than were their heterosexual counterparts. Results stratified by sexual identity underscore these contrasting patterns: Among heterosexual women, White women were less likely to describe their births as unwanted when compared with Black and Latina women; among SMW, White women were more likely to describe their births as unwanted than were Black and Latina women.
Father Knows Best: “Protecting” Women through State Surveillance and Social Control in Anti‐Abortion Policy
Alesha Doan & Corinne Schwarz
Politics & Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on a feminist surveillance and social control framework, we conduct a manifest and latent content analysis of anti‐abortion policies passed in the United States in either a state's House or Senate from 2010 to 2015 to systematically assess the scope, content, and implicit meaning of 282 anti‐abortion bills. We find that out of the 727 anti‐abortion measures contained in this legislation, 622 incorporate surveillance, and social control mechanisms that operate together to socially construct women as a dependent population in need of government protection on two fronts: protection for women and their “unborn,” and protection from abortion providers. Fusing together womanhood and motherhood, these policies essentialize motherhood, depicting women as an uninformed group in need of protection from their own ignorance and the practices of abortion providers who are constructed as an unethical group of health‐care practitioners.
Toddlers’ word learning through overhearing: Others’ attention matters
Allison Fitch et al.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In laboratory settings children are able to learn new words from overheard interactions, yet in naturalistic contexts this is often not the case. We investigated the degree to which joint attention within the overheard interaction facilitates overheard learning. In the study, 20 2-year-olds were tested on novel words they had been exposed to in two different overhearing contexts: one in which both interlocutors were attending to the interaction and one in which one interlocutor was not attending. Participants learned the new words only in the former condition, indicating that they did not learn when joint attention was absent. This finding demonstrates that not all overheard interactions are equally good for word learning; attentive interlocutors are crucial when learning words through overhearing.