22 research outputs found
Family Structure and Income Volatility: Association with Food Stamp Program Participation
Using the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, this paper investigates how income volatility and union stability and transitions influence patterns in Food Stamp Program (FSP) participation among a sample of young families (n=1263). Multinomial logistic regression models suggest that families that experience significant declines in income are related to constant and transitional participation. Families that stay married are more likely not to participate, while other stable unions (e.g., stably cohabitating couples and stably singles) and unions in transition are associated with always participating. We also found immigration status, health, public agency support, public health insurance, and housing assistance from the government or friends/family, to be significant in predicting participation. Strategies to increase participation are discussed.food stamp program participation, income volatility, union transitions, cohabitation, fragile families
Recommended from our members
What Works in Early Childhood Education Programs?: A Meta-Analysis of Preschool Enhancement Programs
Research Findings: This study uses data from a comprehensive meta-analytic database of early childhood education (ECE) program evaluations published between 1960 and 2007 in the United States to examine the incremental effects of adding enhancement program components to ECE programs on childrenâs cognitive abilities, pre-academic skills, behavioral, health, and socio-emotional outcomes. Preschool enhancement programs include parenting programs, skill-based curricula, and teacher professional development programming. Our findings suggest that the addition of parent programs and skill-based curricula to ECE programs can result in improvements to a range of childrenâs ECE outcomes leading to better school readiness. We found no differences in the impacts of ECE programs with or without additional professional development enhancements. Practice or Policy: Designing fully-developed parent programs by explicitly targeting parents, developing academically focused and skill-based curricula, and providing additional teacher professional development enhancements to existing ECE programs can have a substantial impact on a range of childrenâs ECE outcomes leading to better school readiness. Further research is needed in order to determine what conditions are essential to enhancement program success as well as what conditions have negligible effects on or inhibit childrenâs school readiness
Recommended from our members
Parental employment circumstances and childrenâs academic progress
Using data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation, we examine 4476 school-age children in 2569 families with matched pairs of married fathers and mothers to study childrenâs academic progress as a function of fathersâ and mothersâ employment circumstances, with a particular focus on involuntary employment separations. We draw on weekly work histories, collected at 4-month intervals, to characterize parental employment circumstances over a two-year period. Results find no significant associations between mothersâ employment experiences and childrenâs academic progress, even in households where mothers earn more than fathers. In contrast, fathersâ experience of involuntary employment separations is associated with childrenâs academic progress. On average, fathersâ experience of involuntary employment separations is associated with a higher likelihood of childrenâs grade repetition and suspension/expulsion from school. However, subgroup analyses reveal this association only in households where mothers earn more than fathers. We conclude that the adverse impacts of fathersâ involuntary employment separations in two-parent families have less to do with income losses than with family dynamics
Recommended from our members
Earlyâchildhood poverty and adult attainment, behavior, and health
This article assesses the consequences of poverty between a childâs prenatal year and 5th birthday for several adult achievement, health, and behavior outcomes, measured as late as age 37. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1,589) and controlling for economic conditions in middle childhood and adolescence, as well as demographic conditions at the time of the birth, findings indicate statistically significant and, in some cases, quantitatively large detrimental effects of early poverty on a number of attainmentârelated outcomes (adult earnings and work hours). Earlyâchildhood poverty was not associated with such behavioral measures as outâofâwedlock childbearing and arrests. Most of the adult earnings effects appear to operate through early povertyâs association with adult work hours
Recommended from our members
Parental Income and Children's Life Course: Lessons from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
This article reviews how the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) has contributed to our understanding of the links between childhood economic conditions- in particular, the household incomes with very young children-and the economic attainment and health of those children when they reach adulthood. From its beginning, the PSID has provided data useful for addressing intergenerational questions. In the mid-1990s, PSID data supported a series of studies that link early childhood income to early adult attainments, particularly to completed schooling. At the same time, discoveries in neurobiology and epidemiology were beginning to provide details on the processes producing the observed correlations. These discoveries led to a more recent set of PSID-based studies that focus not only on labor market and behavioral outcomes, but also on links between income in the earliest stages of life (including the prenatal period) and adult health. Links between economic disadvantage in childhood and adult health, and the developmental neuroscience underlying those links, are promising areas for future research
Recommended from our members
Perceptions of father involvement patterns in teenageâmother families: Predictors and links to mothersâ psychological adjustment
Based on adolescent mothersâ reports, longitudinal patterns of involvement of young, unmarried biological fathers (n = 77) in teenageâmother families using cluster analytic techniques were examined. Approximately one third of fathers maintained high levels of involvement over time, another third demonstrated low involvement at both time points, and the final third started out highly involved at Wave 1 but decreased to low levels of involvement by Wave 2. Multinomial logistic analyses suggest that mothersâ positive relationships with both the father and his family predict a greater likelihood of initiated and sustained high father involvement. In contrast, stronger support from the maternal grandmother is related to decreasing father involvement over time, and coresidence with the grandmother is related to sustained low father involvement. Whereas a decreasing pattern of father involvement was significantly associated with increased maternal parenting stress over time, the patterns of father involvement were unrelated to changes in young mothersâ levels of depressive symptoms and mastery
Increasing Inequality in Parent Incomes and Childrenâs Schooling
Income inequality and the achievement test score gap between high- and low-income children increased dramatically in the United States beginning in the 1970s. This article investigates the demographic (family income, mother's education, family size, two-parent family structure, and age of mother at birth) underpinnings of the growing income-based gap in schooling using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Across 31 cohorts, we find that increases in the income gap between high- and low-income children account for approximately three-quarters of the increasing gap in completed schooling, one-half of the gap in college attendance, and one-fifth of the gap in college graduation. We find no consistent evidence of increases in the estimated associations between parental income and children's completed schooling. Increasing gaps in the two-parent family structures of high- and low-income families accounted for relatively little of the schooling gap because our estimates of the (regression-adjusted) associations between family structure and schooling were surprisingly small for much of our accounting period. On the other hand, increasing gaps in mother's age at the time of birth accounts for a substantial portion of the increasing schooling gap: mother's age is consistently predictive of children's completed schooling, and the maternal age gap for children born into low- and high-income families increased considerably over the period