Poverty, children's health, and health care utilization

This paper was presented at the conference "Unequal incomes, unequal outcomes? Economic inequality and measures of well-being" as part of session 1, "Health status of children and households in poverty." The conference was held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on May 7, 1999. This paper discusses health as a direct measure of economic well-being and draws attention to those suffering the worst outcomes and the link between poverty and health. According to the author, in 1994 only 10 percent of children under age five in families making $35,000 or more were in less than very good or excellent health. By comparison, one-third of young children in families with income below$10,000 were in less than very good health. Moreover, in recent years the number of poor children whose health is fair or poor has increased relative to the number of nonpoor children in these same health categories. In 1987, for every nonpoor child with health problems, there were close to two children in poverty in poor health; by 1996, that ratio had risen to 2.7.Poverty ; Income ; Medical care

Child Mental Health and Human Capital Accumulation: The Case of ADHD Revisited

Recently, Currie and Stabile (2006) made a significant contribution to our understanding of the influence of ADHD symptoms on a variety of school outcomes including participation in special education, grade repetition and test scores. Their contributions include using a broad sample of children and estimating sibling fixed effects models to control for unobserved family effects. In this paper we look at a sample of older children and confirm and extend many of the JCMS findings in terms of a broader set of measures of human capital and additional specifications.

Education and Labor Market Consequences of Teenage Childbearing: Evidence Using the Timing of Pregnancy Outcomes and Community Fixed Effects

The question of whether giving birth as a teenager has negative economic consequences for the mother remains controversial despite substantial research. In this paper, we build upon existing literature, especially the literature that uses the experience of teenagers who had a miscarriage as the appropriate comparison group. We show that miscarriages are not random events, but rather are likely correlated with (unobserved) community-level factors, casting some doubt on previous findings. Including community-level fixed effects in our specifications lead to important changes in our estimates. By making use of information on the timing of miscarriages as well as birth control choices preceding the teenage pregnancies we construct more relevant control groups for teenage mothers. We find evidence that teenage childbearing likely reduces the probability of receiving a high school diploma by 5 to 10 percentage points, reduces annual income as a young adult by $1,000 to$2,400, and may increase the probability of receiving cash assistance and decrease years of schooling.teen pregnancy, economic consequences, human capital

The influence of early life health conditions on life course health

Between the fetal origins literature and the literature exploring the influence of early health (and poverty) on longer-term health, we have learned a good deal about life course ties between early health and later health. In this paper, we expand this research to look at the links between different dimensions of early-life health and multiple life course outcomes including the age of onset of serious cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and job-related health outcomes such as temporary or permanent withdrawals from the labor market. The four dimensions of childhood health cover mental, physical, self-rated general health and severe headaches or migraines. We further explore potential mediating outcomes (schooling, marital status, and having children), and, in addition, test if the effects of our early health conditions operate through these mediating factors. More generally, we assess the importance of omitted variables using a test proposed by Oster (2019). The data set we use includes 21 countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. We find that the different dimensions of childhood health have unique ties to later outcomes. This is best illustrated for men, for whom early mental health problems play a stronger role for all life course job-related health outcomes, but early poor or fair general health is more strongly linked to the spike in onset of CVDs occurring in their late 40s. For women, these links between childhood health dimensions and life course outcomes are less clear-cut than for men. The spike in onset of CVDs, in their late 40s, is driven by those who had severe headaches or migraines as a child. In terms of life course job-related health outcomes, women with mental health conditions and poor or fair general health do worse while those with early physical health problems generally do better. This latter finding could be related to greater parental investments in education for these women

How developmental neuroscience can help address the problem of child poverty

Nearly 1 in 5 children in the United States lives in a household whose income is below the official federal poverty line, and more than 40% of children live in poor or near-poor households. Research on the effects of poverty on children’s development has been a focus of study for many decades and is now increasing as we accumulate more evidence about the implications of poverty. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently added “Poverty and Child Health” to its Agenda for Children to recognize what has now been established as broad and enduring effects of poverty on child development. A recent addition to the field has been the application of neuroscience-based methods. Various techniques including neuroimaging, neuroendocrinology, cognitive psychophysiology, and epigenetics are beginning to document ways in which early experiences of living in poverty affect infant brain development. We discuss whether there are truly worthwhile reasons for adding neuroscience and related biological methods to study child poverty, and how might these perspectives help guide developmentally-based and targeted interventions and policies for these children and their families

Education and Labor Market Consequences of Teenage Childbearing: Evidence Using the Timing of Pregnancy Outcomes and Community Fixed Effects

The question of whether giving birth as a teenager has negative economic consequences for the mother remains controversial despite substantial research. In this paper, we build upon existing literature, especially the literature that uses the experience of teenagers who had a miscarriage as the appropriate comparison group. We show that miscarriages are not random events, but rather are likely correlated with (unobserved) community-level factors, casting some doubt on previous findings. Including community-level fixed effects in our specifications lead to important changes in our estimates. By making use of information on the timing of miscarriages as well as birth control choices preceding the teenage pregnancies we construct more relevant control groups for teenage mothers. We find evidence that teenage childbearing likely reduces the probability of receiving a high school diploma by 5 to 10 percentage points, reduces annual income as a young adult by $1,000 to$2,400, and may increase the probability of receiving cash assistance and decrease years of schooling.

Association between Income and the Hippocampus

Facets of the post-natal environment including the type and complexity of environmental stimuli, the quality of parenting behaviors, and the amount and type of stress experienced by a child affects brain and behavioral functioning. Poverty is a type of pervasive experience that is likely to influence biobehavioral processes because children developing in such environments often encounter high levels of stress and reduced environmental stimulation. This study explores the association between socioeconomic status and the hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning and memory that is known to be affected by stress. We employ a voxel-based morphometry analytic framework with region of interest drawing for structural brain images acquired from participants across the socioeconomic spectrum (n = 317). Children from lower income backgrounds had lower hippocampal gray matter density, a measure of volume. This finding is discussed in terms of disparities in education and health that are observed across the socioeconomic spectrum