Promoting Healthy Families and Communities for Boys and Young Men of Color

This report talks about boys and young men of color who are at risk for poor health and developmental outcomes beginning at birth and persisting through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. As a result of household poverty and residence in segregated neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage, they are disproportionately bombarded by environmental threats -- often without the benefits of supportive systems of prevention, protection, and care. This exposure to chronic stress undermines cognitive, social-emotional, and regulatory human development as well as the immune system. The parents of boys and young men of color are similarly affected, which affects boys directly in utero and interferes with their parents' abilities to promote their health and development and to protect them from harm as they mature

Are Adolescent Mothers Just Single Mothers?

Published in Journal of Research on Adolescence v. 3 no. 4 pp.353-371, 1993.Support for the preparation of the paper was provided by the W.T. Grant Foundation Faculty Scholars Progam

Women’s economic empowerment : a review of evidence on enablers and barriers

This rapid evidence review summarizes the evidence that women’s economic empowerment (WEE) promotes economic growth, firm productivity, and human development. It also reviews the key enablers and barriers to WEE. We have followed strict criteria regarding the rigor of studies included in this review, noting inconsistencies in the scale and quality of evidence on key questions about WEE. We draw on this evidence to distill key findings to support the United Nations High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment’s priority setting and make recommendations for policy interventions or important topics requiring further research

The Association Between Grandparental Co-Residence and Adolescent Childbearing

There is some evidence to suggest that, in the US, young women are predisposed to have children early and outside of marriage and to marry early when growing up in a non-intact family, plagued by poverty and economic dependence. The number of children growing up in non-intact families has increased, and many grow up in families with multiple characteristics, which place them in a high risk context. In this examination of the influence of family structure on children's outcome, residence with extended kin, specifically grandparents, is examined for its impact on early childbearing. Data were obtained on a nationally representative sample of 4786 females who were sophomores in 1980 from the HIgh School and Beyond study. Dependent variables were evidence of childbearing before the age of 20 and childbearing out of wedlock before the age of 20. Independent variables were race and living arrangements that included both natural parents, one natural parent and one stepparent, one natural parent and no stepparent, and neither parent. In each of these situations, a dummy variable was coded for the presence of a grandparent in the household in both 1980 and 1982. Control variables were region, size of place of residence, number of siblings, and socioeconomic status score. Interaction effects between control and independent variables was found for growing up in a single parent family and being African-American. The results of logistic regression techniques showed that grandparent co-residence effects did not vary by race or family type. African-American teenagers were found to be more likely to have a teenage birth and more likely to have the birth outside of marriage. African-American teenagers from a single parent family were also more likely to have a teenage birth and to have the birth outside of marriage; this effect was not seen in Whites. The results are considered quite preliminary due to the marginal significance levels of coefficients and the lack of attention to selectivity bias. Grandparents co-residence was significantly negatively associated with a birth before the age of 20 at the .10 level of significance. The pattern was similar for outside marriage births but was not significant. There is a need for better specification of measures; for instance, there may be important differences between growing up with a divorced versus a never married mother.Support for the preparation of this paper was provided by a grant to the Hopkins Population Center by NIA and NICHD: #2 P30 HD06268-19

The effect of maternal socio-economic status throughout the lifespan on infant birthweight

Astone NM, Misra D, Lynch C. The effect of maternal socio-economic status throughout the lifespan on infant birthweight. Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology 2007; 21: 310–318. The objective of this study was to investigate whether maternal socio-economic status during childhood and at the time of pregnancy each have unique associations with infant birthweight when biological determinants of birthweight are controlled. The data are from a three-generation study which contains information on the mothers and grandmothers of 987 singleton infants, collected over a period of 25 years. We used simple and multivariable regression to assess the association between indicators of a woman's socio-economic status and her offspring's birthweight. Women who grew up in poor households had smaller babies than those who did not, and a unit increase in the income/needs ratio (analogous to the poverty index), in non-poor households only, was associated with a 185 g [95% CI 70, 200] increase in infant birthweight. Maternal age at the index infant's birth had a positive association with birthweight that diminished as women reached their mid-twenties. Among mothers with low education, high grandmaternal education was associated with a 181 g [95% CI 71, 292] increase in infant birthweight, while high grandmaternal education had no effect among infants whose mothers were relatively well-educated. This interaction between grandmaternal and maternal education is consistent with claims that cumulative stress is an important mechanism connecting maternal socio-economic status and infant health.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/71764/1/j.1365-3016.2007.00821.x.pd

Family Demography, Social Theory, and Investment in Social Capital

The analytic models used by family demographers would be strengthened by the concept of social capital, placed in the context of social exchange theory. Using that concept to designate resources that emerge from social ties, the authors advance five propositions: 1) social capital is a multidimensional attribute of an individual; 2) the dimensions of social capital are the number of relationships a person has, their quality (strength), and the resources available through those relationships; 3) group membership and interaction facilitate the development of social capital; 4) the structural properties of groups influence the development of social capital; and 5) the acquisition and maintenance of social capital is a major motivator of human behavior. The formation of sexual partnerships, the birth and rearing of children, and both intragenerational and intergenerational transfers constitute major forms of investment in social capital in virtually all societies. Copyright 1999 by The Population Council, Inc..

Social capital and vulnerable urban youth in five global cities

Purpose: Social capital is essential for the successful development of young people. The current study examines direct measures of social capital in young people in five urban global contexts. Methods: The Well-Being of Adolescents in Vulnerable Environments is a global study of young people aged 15–19 years living in disadvantaged, urban settings. Respondent-driven sampling was used to recruit approximately 500 participants from each site. The sample included 2,339 young people (mean age 16.7 years; 47.5% female). We examined the associations between social capital in four domains—family, school, peers, and neighborhood and demographic characteristics—using gender-stratified ordinary least-squares regression. We also examined associations between self-reported health and the four social capital domains, which was minimal. Results: School enrollment was positively associated with social capital for young women in Baltimore, Delhi, and Shanghai; the association was less consistent for young men. The same pattern is true for perceived wealth. Unstable housing was associated with low familial social capital in all groups except young women in Shanghai and young men in Ibadan and Johannesburg. Being raised outside a two-parent family has a widespread, negative association with social capital. Self-reported health had a mainly positive association with social capital with the most consistent association being neighborhood social capital. Conclusions: Different types of social capital interact with social contexts and gender differently. Strategies that aim to build social capital as part of risk reduction and positive youth development programming need to recognize that social capital enhancement may work differently for different groups and in different settings

The Impact of Fathers’ Clubs on Child Health in Rural Haiti

In recognition of the important role that fathers play in the lives of young children in Haiti, a public health organization instituted fathers’ clubs in 1994 as a strategy to improve the health outcomes of children. Fathers’ clubs focus on child and family health education. To evaluate the effectiveness of fathers’ clubs, we examined the health of children born in Haitian villages with and without active fathers’ clubs and compared results for the two groups. The presence of a fathers’ club in a child's birth village had a positive effect on vaccination status, growth monitoring, and vitamin A supplementation after we controlled for socioeconomic status, time, and the quality of the village health agent. Child weights and mortality were not affected by the fathers’ clubs