For the children
Income and child maltreatment in unmarried families: Evidence from the Earned Income Tax Credit
Lawrence Berger et al.
Review of Economics of the Household, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study estimates the associations of income with both (self-reported) child protective services involvement and parenting behaviors that proxy for child abuse and neglect risk among unmarried families. Our primary strategy follows the instrumental variables approach employed by Dahl and Lochner (2012), which leverages variation between states and over time in the generosity of the total state and federal earned income tax credit for which a family is eligible to identify exogenous variation in family income. As a robustness check, we also estimate standard OLS regressions (linear probability models), reduced form OLS regressions, and OLS regressions with the inclusion of a control function (each with and without family-specific fixed effects). Our micro-level data are drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth-cohort of relatively disadvantaged urban children who have been followed from birth to age nine. Results suggest that an exogenous increase in income is associated with reductions in behaviorally approximated child neglect and CPS involvement, particularly among low-income single-mother families.
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Housing Affordability And Children’s Cognitive Achievement
Sandra Newman & Scott Holupka
Health Affairs, November 2016, Pages 2092-2099
Abstract:
Housing cost burden — the fraction of income spent on housing — is the most prevalent housing problem affecting the healthy development of millions of low- and moderate-income children. By affecting disposable income, a high burden affects parents’ expenditures on both necessities for and enrichment of their children, as well as investments in their children. Reducing those expenditures and investments, in turn, can affect children’s development, including their cognitive skills and physical, social, and emotional health. This article summarizes the first empirical evidence of the effects of housing affordability on children’s cognitive achievement and on one factor that appears to contribute to these effects: the larger expenditures on child enrichment by families in affordable housing. We found that housing cost burden has the same relationship to both children’s cognitive achievement and enrichment spending on children, exhibiting an inverted U shape in both cases. The maximum benefit occurs when housing cost burden is near 30 percent of income — the long-standing rule-of-thumb definition of affordable housing. The effect of the burden is stronger on children’s math ability than on their reading comprehension and is more pronounced with burdens above the 30 percent standard. For enrichment spending, the curve is “shallower” (meaning the effect of optimal affordability is less pronounced) but still significant.
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Mariam Hanna Ibrahim et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Parent–child relationships can critically affect youth physiological development. Most studies have focused on the influence of maternal behaviors, with little attention to paternal influences. The current study investigated father engagement with their adolescents in household (shopping, cooking) and discretionary leisure activities as a predictor of youth cortisol response to a challenging interpersonal task in young adulthood. The sample (N = 213) was roughly divided between Mexican American (MA; n = 101) and European American (EA; n = 112) families, and included resident biological-father (n = 131) and resident stepfather families (n = 82). Salivary cortisol was collected before, immediately after, and at 20 and 40 min after an interpersonal challenge task; area under the curve (AUCg) was calculated to capture total cortisol output. Results suggested that more frequent father engagement in shared activities with adolescents (ages 11–16), but not mother engagement, predicted lower AUCg cortisol response in young adulthood (ages 19–22). The relation remained significant after adjusting for current mother and father engagement and current mental health. Further, the relation did not differ given family ethnicity, father type (step or biological), or adolescent sex. Future research should consider unique influences of fathers when investigating the effects of parent–child relationships on youth physiological development and health.
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João Guassi Moreira & Eva Telzer
Developmental Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Adolescent decision-making is highly sensitive to input from the social environment. In particular, adult and maternal presence influence adolescents to make safer decisions when encountered with risky scenarios. However, it is currently unknown whether maternal presence confers a greater advantage than mere adult presence in buffering adolescent risk taking. In the current study, 23 adolescents completed a risk-taking task during an fMRI scan in the presence of their mother and an unknown adult. Results reveal that maternal presence elicits greater activation in reward-related neural circuits when making safe decisions but decreased activation following risky choices. Moreover, adolescents evidenced a more immature neural phenotype when making risky choices in the presence of an adult compared to mother, as evidenced by positive functional coupling between the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex. Our results underscore the importance of maternal stimuli in bolstering adolescent decision-making in risky scenarios.
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Childhood Sexual Abuse and Early Timing of Puberty
Jennie Noll et al.
Journal of Adolescent Health, forthcoming
Methods: A cohort of sexually abused females and matched comparisons was followed longitudinally at mean ages 11 through 20 years. Sexually abused participants (N = 84) were referred by protective services. Comparison participants (N = 89) were recruited to be comparable in terms of age, ethnicity, income level, family constellation, zip codes, and nonsexual trauma histories. Stage of puberty was indexed at each assessment by nurse and participant ratings of breast and pubic hair development using Tanner staging — the gold standard for assessing pubertal onset and development. Cumulative logit mixed models were used to estimate the association between sexual abuse status and the likelihood of transitioning from earlier to later Tanner stage categories controlling for covariates and potential confounds.
Results: Sexual abuse was associated with earlier pubertal onset: 8 months earlier for breasts (odds ratio: 3.06, 95% CI: 1.11–8.49) and 12 months earlier for pubic hair (odds ratio: 3.49, 95% CI: 1.34–9.12). Alternative explanations including ethnicity, obesity, and biological father absence did not eradicate these findings.
Conclusions: This study confirms an association between exposure to childhood sexual abuse and earlier pubertal onset. Results highlight the possibility that, due to this early onset, sexual abuse survivors may be at increased risk for psychosocial difficulties, menstrual and fertility problems, and even reproductive cancers due to prolonged exposure to sex hormones.
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The Spread of Substance Use and Delinquency Between Adolescent Twins
Brett Laursen et al.
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This investigation examines the spread of problem behaviors (substance use and delinquency) between twin siblings. A sample of 628 twins (151 male twin pairs and 163 female twin pairs) drawn from the Quebec Newborn Twin Study completed inventories describing delinquency and substance use at ages 13, 14, and 15. A 3-wave longitudinal actor–partner interdependence model (APIM) identified avenues whereby problem behaviors spread from one twin to another. Problems did not spread directly between twins across domains. Instead, 2 indirect pathways were identified: (a) Problems first spread interindividually (between twins) within a behavioral domain, then spread intraindividually (within twins) across behavioral domains (e.g., Twin A delinquency → Twin B delinquency → Twin B substance use); and (b) problems first spread intraindividually (within twins) across behavioral domains, then spread interindividually (between twins) within a behavioral domain (e.g., Twin A delinquency → Twin A substance use → Twin B substance use). Controls for genetic effects, gene–environment correlations, friend substance use and delinquency, and parenting behaviors increase confidence in the conclusion that twin siblings uniquely contribute to the spread of problem behaviors during adolescence. Twin sibling influence is a risk factor for illicit substance use, both because substance use by one twin predicts substance use by the other twin, but also because delinquency in one twin predicts delinquency in the other twin, which then gives rise to greater substance use.
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Ed Gerrish
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act (CSPIA) of 1998 on child support performance measures that are rewarded financially as well as outcomes that are not rewarded. Three of the five performance measures explicitly rewarded by CSPIA are reconstructed in this analysis, as are two child support outcomes that were considered for financial rewards but were ultimately rejected. Using a panel interrupted time series model with state fixed effects and state-specific trends, this analysis finds that CSPIA had a statistically positive impact on just one rewarded performance goal, cost-effectiveness, and negatively impacted an unrewarded child support outcome — collections sent to other states. Effect sizes suggest that CSPIA had little impact on child support performance, on balance. These results provide more evidence to the ongoing debate about the ability of performance incentives to improve public sector performance. It also suggests that reforming performance systems in response to perceived problems may create new gaming responses.
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Fabian Probst et al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, January 2017, Pages 213–221
Abstract:
Infant care often is carried out under stressful circumstances. Little is known about differences in caretaking motivation between men and women under stress. In the present study, stress was induced in 40 participants (21 women, 19 men) by means of the cold pressor stress test, 40 (22 women, 18 men) serving as controls. Participants then rated their urge to care for newborn infants shown on 20 short video clips. The infants in the videos were either crying (N = 10) or were showing typical neonatal facial movements (N = 10). Skin conductance was obtained while participants viewed the videos and salivary cortisol was measured to capture stress responses. We found sex differences in caretaking motivation, such that stress led to decreased caretaking motivation in men but not in women. Furthermore, stressed men elicited a stronger skin conductance change while viewing infant videos than stressed women. These findings provide further evidence for differential stress reactions in men and women and may have crucial implications for parental care.
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William Fabricius & Go Woon Suh
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
Whether children of separated parents 2 years of age and younger should have frequent overnight parenting time with noncustodial fathers has been the subject of much debate but little data. Contrary to some previous findings, the current study found benefits to both parent-child relationships associated with overnights (a) up to and including equal numbers of overnights at both parents’ homes, (b) for both the long-term mother-child and father-child relationships, and (c) both when children were 2 years old, as well as when they were under 1 year of age. These benefits held after controlling for subsequent parenting time with fathers in childhood and adolescence, parent education and conflict up to 5 years after the separation, and children’s sex and age at separation. While the findings do not establish causality they provide strong support for policies to encourage frequent overnight parenting time for infants and toddlers, because the benefits associated with overnights also held for parents who initially agreed about overnights as well as for those who disagreed and had the overnight parenting plan imposed over 1 parent’s objections. The observed benefits for the long-term father-child relationship are consistent with findings from intervention studies showing that fathers who are more involved with infants and toddlers develop better parenting skills and relationships with their children.