child well-being

Children of Incarcerated Parents

March 14, 2015

The United States has more than 2 million people behind bars, and 45 percent were living with their children before they were imprisoned. U.S. children of incarcerated parents are an extremely vulnerable group, and much more likely to have behavioral problems and physical and mental health conditions than their peers.

In this recording of a webinar, Kristin Turney, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California-Irvine, presented findings from her research on the well-being of children with incarcerated parents. She is among a group of researchers using the Fragile Families and Children Wellbeing Study to understand the effects of incarceration on crucial aspects of child development, including parent-child relationships, school difficulties, and homelessness. Her discussion was followed by 10 minutes of questions and answers.

This webinar is provided by PRB’s Center for Public Information on Population Research, with funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The Economic and Social Consequences of Job Loss and Unemployment

November 20, 2013

In this recording of a webinar, Jennie E. Brand, associate professor of sociology and associate director of the California Center for Population Research (CCPR) at UCLA, and Till von Wachter, associate professor of economics and faculty affiliate of CCPR at UCLA, discussed some of the short-term and long-term consequences of job loss and unemployment for families in the United States. Their discussion was followed by 10 minutes of questions and answers.

This webinar is provided by PRB’s Center for Public Information on Population Research, with funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

PRB Discuss Online: Chronic Diseases Affect Youth Globally

September 27, 2011

In 2008, 36 million people died from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Deaths related to these chronic diseases are increasing, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Over half of deaths are associated with behaviors that begin or are reinforced during adolescence, including tobacco and alcohol use, poor eating habits, and lack of exercise. Global trends indicate that NCD-related behaviors are on the rise among young people, and that they establish patterns of behavior that persist throughout life and are often hard to change.

Despite the contribution of adolescent health to reducing NCDs globally, the September 2011 High-Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York did not address these issues. What is known about adolescent contributions to NCDs? What are effective strategies to address them?

In a PRB Discuss Online, Dr. Robert Blum, William H. Gates Sr. professor, and chair, Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and director, Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute, answered questions from participants about how chronic diseases affect youth and what we can do to prevent them.

Sept. 27, 2011 NOON (EDT)

Transcript of Questions and Answers

Dr. Anima Sharma: Dear Dr. Blum, the youths of modern times, especially in the developing countries like India are surrounded by the multitude of problems at psychological, environmental, personal and professional fronts. People often complaint that the lives have become very complex these days and it does have, no doubt, but according to me many such situation which lead to severe and chronic types of sufferings could be avoided if we could teach the youths about the ways to adjust with their environ (at home and at work place). Many times the slight adjustments may change their lives entirely but we need Mentors and Trainers who could teach them the right skills of personal and professional management.
I am an Anthropologist and have been lucky enough to get a chance to study urban, rural and ethnic societies in India. I found that types of problems faced by these three types of societies are different but we can’t say that it is better in any because the even the ethnic societies are no more as simpe as those used to be, say 50 years back. Hence, my summation is that while thinking about the youths in the context of the chronic diseases we should also think about the ethnic populations, their health problems and the prevailing healthcare system/ facilities in their areas. Thanks.
Robert W. Blum: Dr. Sharma raises some interesting and important points. First, we know that in every country of the world where there are data, ethnic minorities are disadvantaged when compared with the majority population. The evidence is clear that they have less good health status and more chronic conditions compared with majority peers. As it relates to NCDs there are things that young people can do including avoidance of harmful behaviors such as eating high-fat foods or smoking tobacco, but there are also community-level strategies that improve outcomes. As Dr. Sharma sugests, we need to ask ourselves: Why are those who are ethnic minorities least likely to enjoy positive health?

Henry Tagoe: It is evidently clear that countries in the Global South are facing the strain of the double burden of disease because they are straggling with the challenges of infectious diseases and due to demographic, nutritional and epidemiological transitions chronic non-communicable diseases are now a major challenge not forgetting limited health system. One major issue is the lack of national representative data for research especially the levels of the major modifiable risk factor such alcohol, smoking obesity more at child and youth level to inform policy to effect behavioral change. This is one on the major areas that countries in the developing world should focus on since such behavior at early ages will be carried on to adulthood and the implication to chronic disease. Can data be made available to researchers in this area if available?
Robert W. Blum: This is an excellent question. For youth there are some data sources. First, in a recent paper in the Lancet, Gore and her colleagues report disability adjusted life year data for low- and middle-income as well as high-income countries as they relate to adolescents and youth. The Global Tobacco Survey of the World Health Organization is another data source as is the adolescent module of the MICS (which is a UNICEF global survey). A third source of data that relates to certain NCDs among adolescents and youth are the DHS national surveys those these relate mostly to sexual and reproductive health. The issue of dual burden of disease is an increasingly pressing issue for many LMI countries.

Meskerem Bekele, Ethiopia: Yes, you are right! The problem is ours also. As you mention religious institution is one way to protect youth from this chronic disease. As a journalist I was produced programs about this issue. And many of the person’s told me that they are out of this addiction because of their religion. But as a journalist can we mention this situation?
Robert W. Blum: Much of what we know about the protective effects of religion comes from research primarily done in the United States and what we see there relates less to religion per se than to religiosity. Religiosity can be viewed as having two primary dimensions: private (prayer for example) and public (going to church, mosque, synagogue, etc.) For youth it appears that public religiosity has a more powerful impact on behavior than private behaviors. We see in other communities around the world that certain religious prohibitions have an impact only if they are reinforced by the climate and culture of the family and community. So for example, a religious prohibition against smoking or drinking has more of an impact when one lives in a community where such substances are either expensive or difficult to obtain as a consequence of that prohibition.

Tyjen Tsai: Do you think that behavior change communication strategies like using peer educators to help educate about chronic diseases (or a specific one, like tobacco use, for example) would work with youth? And if so, what kind of BCC would be most effective?
Robert W. Blum: There is an extensive body of literature on the use of peer educators. While peer education can be effective, it often is not. What seems to differentiate effective from ineffective peer education is the extent of adult involvement, supervision, and mentorship of the mentors. Where there is a lot, the effectiveness increases. Additionally, what we also know is that the people who are the greatest beneficiaries of peer interventions are the peer educators themselves. This suggests that as a strategy, recruiting those most likely to engage in a health-compromising behavior, as an educator may have beneficial impact.
Now, turning to your question and going beyond peer education, effective behavior change strategies for youth are grounded in both a developmental understanding of young people and an explicit theory of change (for example Bandura’s Social Learning Theory). We see numerous examples of effective behavioral interventions around the world but in truth we see many more that don’t work (at great cost). One reason is that we often fail to evaluate our interventions, and even when we do, we tend to stick to them when they should be abandoned (witness prograns like “Scared Straight,” DARE, abstinence-only interventions.)

Ryan: What effect has climate change had/may have on noncommunicable diseases?
Robert W. Blum: This is a complicated question. One element of climate change is the decline in air quality in many urban settings that has contributed to asthma. So too, exposure to environmental toxins has an impact on fetal health and development; and as our knowledge of epigenetics increases we are learning that these fetal changes have impact across the life span. So for example, Hoek et al. has shown that nutritional deprivation during the Dutch famine of 1944 was associated with an increase in psychiatric disorders among adolescents who were born 6 to 8 months after the worst of the famine. So too, we see the strong association between birth weight and diseases later in life including diabetes mellitus, hypertension, metabolic syndrom and cardiovascular disease (Barker Hypothesis).

Kate: As smoking prevention efforts have shown,it’s very difficult to get people (and youth in particular) to act to prevent health consequences that may not appear for years. How can we make youth understand the risks of chronic disease?
Robert W. Blum: When you look at trends in smoking in many Western countries over the past 25 years we have seen extraordinary and positive changes. Today in the United States for example cigarette smoking is at an all-time low with approximately 20 percent of youth who smoke. Conversely, 80 percent of youth disapprove of smoking. So, while we have made a lot of progress we still have a long way to go. What we know is that health risk-reduction strategies work best when a number of elements line up. Specifically, we know that information alone is not sufficient for behavior change but when it is coordinated with minimum age of purchase laws that are enforced, taxation that makes tobacco purchase cost-prohibitive for youth, and smoking laws that prohibit indoor smoking; you then begin to create a culture where it is expensive, difficult, and increasingly socially unacceptable to smoke.

Eric Zuehlke: How can health systems that are already strapped for resources in developing countries balance the need to treat communicable diseases and at the same time address prevention strategies to combat non-communicable diseases?
Robert W. Blum: As we look across the globe we see a decline in infectious causes of morbidity and mortality in the adolescent years. That is not to say that infectious diseases are not important, but in most LMIC as well as high-income countries, today NCDs represent the primary causes of death in adolescents. Additionally as populations age in countries around the world increasingly it will be NCDs that will be the primary causes of morbidity. So for LMIC these issues are and will increasingly become important drains on national economies and resources. That is why the United Nations held a High-Level Meeting last week in New York to draw attention to these concerns.

Ryan: What are the differences in diseases and treatments between the developed and developing countries? Or between economic classes?
Robert W. Blum: We know that in every country of the world, those who are the poorest have also the worst health status and that includes both infectious diseases and NCDs. In sub-Saharan Africa, in some countries women are more than 100 times more likely to die in childbirth than in HIC. So too, in countries where abortion is illicit and clandestine the mortality rate is very high, while in countries where it is is legal and safe, mortality is below that of child birth. When we compare high- and low-income countries there is a big gap in access to a number of interventions that reduce morbidity and subsequent NCDs: the HPV vaccine for example.

maricela: What public policies would help with this population?
Robert W. Blum: Numerous public policies make a difference:

Tobacco taxes-smoking among youth is very price-sensitive.
Menu labeling—the evidence is that information impacts food selection and also content of prepared foods.
Graduated licenses for new drivers—it is estimated to reduce vehicular deaths during the first year of driving by as much as 40 percent.
Restrictions on advertising harmful products.
Minimum age of purchase laws with strict enforcement.

Jeff Meer: How can advocates best make the case that children and youth represent great potential for creating positive change on chronic diseases (and not just a problem to be dealt with)? It seems to me that if there is inspiration to be drawn in the non communicable disease prevention and control field, it would be in working with kids. After all, their lifestyle choices, dietary habits, recreational choices and other modifiable risks are not yet set. Perhaps if we can view kids and youth as assets, and not so much as liabilities, we would be better off.
Robert W. Blum: I fully agree with you. We need to highlight what young people are doing around the globe to make a difference in their neighborhoods. We need to give prizes and recognitions (like the CNN Heroes awards) for youth interventions to shine a spotlight on outstanding work. We as adults need to help train young people so that they have the skills to be effective advocates. We need to engage young people with chronic conditions as part of the solution—as youth leaders.

Ryan: Regarding the recent health care reform, how far do you see it going in cutting down on noncommunicable diseases?
Robert W. Blum: I think that it will have some benefits since there are provisions for preventive services. When we look for example of what will be covered for women, for the first time oral contraception will be covered as will more widely available cancer screening. However, the primary focus of the legislation is on financing of medical services; and until there is a focus on health care delivery and until there is a significant commitment to take to scale interventions that we know work then we will be playing catch-up at a high cost to health and our economy.

Tyjen Tsai: Thanks for answering my other question. With the rise of diabetes, do you think that will go hand-in-hand with a rise in chronic depression as well?
Robert W. Blum: The rise in diabetes is a result of a dramatic increase in obesity…a trend we are seeing globally. We know that there is an association between obesity and depression; and so too, we know that there is a positive association between exercise and mental well-being.

Cat: Dr Blum, How important is getting NCDs onto the national health priority agendas in developing countries? If you take a country like China, where about 50 percent of their tax revenue comes from the tax on tobacco, smoking is a behavior the government doesn’t want the public to stop doing. So my question also relates to how to navigate the political environment when working on NCDs is unsupported.
Robert W. Blum: The point that you make is a good one; however, I would point out that in countries like China where the population is aging the economic costs to the economy will only escalate with increasing NCDs. So it is with countries around the world (both rich and poor)…while there may be short-term benefits to ignoring the consequences of pollution or some of our decisions on pesticide use or cash crops, the real costs will be passed on to our children—and theirs.

PRB Discuss Online: The Long-Term Effects of Childhood Poverty in the United States

October 28, 2010

Most poor children achieve less, exhibit more problem behaviors, and are less healthy than children raised in more-affluent families. Looking beyond these well-known correlations between poverty and negative outcomes in childhood, recent studies have assessed the effects of childhood poverty in the United States on later attainment and health. During a PRB Discuss Online, Greg Duncan, professor of education at the University of California, Irvine, and the current president of the Society for Research in Child Development, answered questions from participants about the effects of childhood poverty in the United States on later attainment and health.

Oct. 28, 2010, 1 p.m. (EDT)

Transcript of Questions and Answers

Richard Cincotta: Are there racial, or locational (rural-urban, ethnic vs. mixed-race neighborhood, high-rise vs. house, etc.) differences that show up in findings? I know that you may not have the data to fully answer that question—how about: Are there any interesting socio-environmental conditions that mediate your most general findings?
Greg Duncan: Good question. We checked to see if the relationship between early income and later productivity and health differed by gender or race. We found no significant differences at all. Recent research by Brian Jacob and Jens Ludwig found evidence that generous housing vouchers helped most the education outcomes for poor children in Chicago’s worst neighborhoods. In our research, the story was about main effects of low income and not the interactions.

William O’Hare: I thought I read somewhere that must poor adults did not grow up in poverty. The odds of being a poor adult are higher but the number of non-poor children is so much larger that in shear numbers persons not growing up in poverty overwhelm the higher odds for poor children. If that is true, what does in mean about where we should focus our attention to prevent or limit adult poverty?
Greg Duncan: It is indeed true that most children who grow up experiencing poverty do not end up as poor adults. In fact, that study used the same data base—the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—as did our current set of studies. Our recent studies are based on the idea that poverty has selective effects on life chances—that the timing of poverty in childhood matters a lot and that poverty affects some kind of outcomes more than others. Abundant research has suggested that poverty early in childhood is most harmful, and that achievement is more sensitive to economic deprivation than is problem behavior (e.g., delinquency, teen births). Our recent studies are the first to use data that span a long enough time to link poverty as early as the prenatal year to adult outcomes as late as age 37. We again find that early poverty—perhaps even poverty during pregnancy and infancy—matters the most. But we also find that the early poverty impacts on labor market success may have as much to do with health as anything else. This complements recent epidemiological research showing that very stressful conditions during pregnancy and infancy can “program” the body in a way that leads to bad health outcomes later on.

J. Herman Blake: I have several interests and will put them in separate questions. What are the long-term effects of childhood poverty on oral health of adolescents and adults? Are there racial or ethnic variations? I am interested in both preventive approaches to oral health and later treatments for oral health problems.
Greg Duncan: Regrettably, we do not have data on oral health for adolescents and adults. Our adult health measures are, among others, self-reported weight and height, and diagnoses of arthritis, hypertension and diabetes. An interesting recent study of socioeconomic disparities and the oral health of children is: W. Thomas Boyce, Pamela K. Den Besten, Juliet Stamperdahl, Ling Zhan, Yebin Jiang, Nancy E. Adler, John D. Featherstone, Social inequalities in childhood dental caries: The convergent roles of stress, bacteria and disadvantage, Social Science & Medicine, Volume 71, Issue 9, November 2010, Pages 1644-1652.

Jane Cover: For which adult outcomes of child poverty is the evidence quite strong, and what are the areas or outcomes for which the evidence is more mixed, i.e., what do we know definitively (or as definitively as social science permits), and what is still up in the air?
Greg Duncan: Good question. The evidence linking low income to achievement in childhood is very solid, based on several different data sets and uses a number of experimental and longitudinal methods. But you ask about adulthood. Almost all of the existing childhood poverty/adult outcome studies are based on data that begins in adolescence. There are reasons to believe that poverty early in childhood is what matters the most, but almost no studies have followed individuals from conception to adulthood. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is one of them. Several Scandinavian countries have administrative data that could serve this purpose as well. There are several wonderful cohort studies in the UK but they did not measure income early in life. Our results are based on the PSID and we are in the process of replicating our results using data from the Norwegian data registers. Both provide terrific income histories across all of childhood but only limited information on adult outcomes. The PSID is the best here, with information on earnings, criminal behavior and health. The PSID is a public use data set, so we hope that people will attempt to replicate and extend what we have done.

Juanita Tamayo Lott: My research concern is along the lines of Bill O’Hare’s. Are long-term findings based on cross-sectional or longitudinal data and do they consider context such as economic depression, an era of affluence, civil or international war, natural calamaties, or persistent structural inequities? Does such research delineate intergenerational sets of populations by those who are born and raised poor and continue to be poor in adulthood; those who are poor as children but not as adults; and children who are not born or raised poor but become so as adults. What is their distribution? To what extent do researchers, service providers, and policy makers assume, even if unconsciously, that the poor will continue to be poor?
Greg Duncan: Our study, by the way, has been published, so you and other readers can see the details for yourselves. The reference is Duncan, G. J., Ziol-Guest, K. M. and Kalil, A. (2010), Early-Childhood Poverty and Adult Attainment, Behavior, and Health. Child Development, 81: 306–325. Briefly, we are able to use 38-year longitudinal data on a national sample of U.S. children born between 1968 and 1975. The data provide a year by year accounting of family income from the prenatal year through age 15. Our analyses related adult outcomes to income very early in childhood (the prenatal year through age 5), but we controlled statistically for differences in income between ages 6 and 15, as well as a host of demographic characteristics at birth such as family structure and parental education and test scores. Since the data are from the U.S., there is a limited range of disruptive historical events and our results should not be generalized to other countries in different stages of development. We approached the research with as few preconceptions as possible. As author of the 1984 book Years of Poverty, Years of Plenty and the former principal investigator for the data used in the study, I am keenly aware of the surprising amount of economic mobility, both within and across generations, that has been documented with these and other data. The study’s website (http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/Publications/) details many of the studies that provide answers to some of your other questions.

J. Herman Blake: How does your study of the long-term effects of childhood poverty help us understand the issues reflected in the question of a “culture of poverty?” Can we analyze this issue without becoming enmeshed in social controversy?
Greg Duncan: Culture of poverty arguments have cycled through poverty debates for a long time. Did you see the recent New York Times article about them? It was written by Patricia Cohen and appeared on October 18, 2010 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/us/18poverty.html?emc=eta1). Our studies attempt to isolate the role of income rather than culture in affecting children’s life chances. In finding that income early in childhood seems to matter, we are not saying that it matters more than culture or parenting or neighborhood conditions. Income is important to understand because it is one of the few things that policy CAN change. Of course, cultural arguments are invoked every time some anti-poverty policy is being debated, but the work supports and welfare reforms of the 1990s proved that Americans are willing to spend tens of billions more dollars on helping to boost the incomes of poor families, provided that the help led to more labor market involvement and less welfare reliance. So that I think that it is possible to fashion helpful policies that are consistent with the values of most Americans. Even if, given the budget deficit, we can’t spend more money on low-income families, our research suggests that existing programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit but be more effective if families with young children received relatively more and families with older children received relatively less.

Okunrinmeta Olamide Adenike: What is the effect of Long-Term Childhood Poverty on the critical thinking and Intellectual performance of affected children?
Greg Duncan: Evidence from a number of studies suggests that increasing the family incomes of poor families will lead to gains in young children’s cognitive and academic performance. Many correlational studies have shown that. But so too did the Negative Income Tax experiment, which assigned families at random to get higher incomes or not. Quasi-experimental studies of the mid-1990s expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit found links to higher child test scores, as did a study of Canada’s expansion of its child benefits. We know less about why. Several studies point to what money can buy in terms of enriching children’s early learning experiences, both inside the home (e.g., more books) and outside (e.g., better-quality child care).

Allan Hill: Are there intervention studies that reducing household poverty improves childhood and post-childhood outcomes net of other changes (e.g. secular health improvements)? Are there panel or intervention studies in LDCs that address this question?
Greg Duncan: The income-based intervention studies (some random assignment and some strong quasi-experimental design) compare treatment and control groups in the same cohort, so secular changes are affecting both groups equally. In LDCs there are a number of conditional cash transfer programs with positive results. Here again treatment and control groups in the same cohort are being compared.

Lisa: There is much research available on the impact of long-term poverty,or generational poverty, on outcomes for children. What, if any, are the differences in outcomes for children of sudden, possibly shorter-term poverty for children? I would like to be able to talk about the impact of poverty caused by the current economic downturn on children in some of our publications coming out in the next year or two.
Greg Duncan: There haven’t been good studies of very short term (several months to one or two years) poverty spells. If the spells are several years in duration, and occur during early childhood, then our results would indicate that there are likely negative impacts. There is a separate literature on the impact of unemployment on children. Ariel Kalil at the University of Chicago, who was a coauthor on my poverty studies, has contributed to this literature and knows it well.

Meskerem Bekele, Ethiopia: It is good to discuss with a professional like you. And I want to thank PRB for their facilitation. The issue is interesting and surprising to me. I do not think like this about poverty before. . . .to me, childhood poverty makes someone strong. Even most of our country’s “successful” persons talk about themselves likes this. When the research shows that “…childhood poverty have a substantial negative association with adult earnings, work hours, and certain health conditions…”—what do you mean by “work hours”?
Greg Duncan: These sessions are enjoyable for us as well. Families experience a surprising amount of income fluctuation from one year to the next. Our research indicates that timing is everything—if it occurs early in childhood then it is likely to be harmful. Poverty spells at other times, perhaps because families are better able to cope with them, appear to have benign impacts. Our look at work hours used information on the children’s report of their adult work hours between ages 25 and 37. We average annual work hours over that time and tried to see if they were sensitive to early spells of poverty. And, yes, they appeared to be.

Usha Natampalli: Do children who face multiple deprivation owing to poverty and hunger have shorter life expectations?
Greg Duncan: We know that there are strong simple associations between family background and longevity—individuals raised in lower socioeconomic status families do not live as long as individuals raised in more affluent families. Our study took a more detailed look at the timing of poverty in childhood and found that early childhood was the most sensitive. We could only follow the children into their 30s so we couldn’t observe mortality. But with early poverty linked to obesity and hypertension, the chances are that these effect might well carry over into life expectancy.

Luis Uribe: This kind of problems in the adulthood-related to child poverty, affect in the same way to the Latino community?
Greg Duncan: The data we used followed children born in the United States between 1968 and 1975, so there were very few Latinos in the sample. We did not observe differences in poverty effects between Blacks and Whites, but we can’t say if Latinos are affected in the same way. As you may know, other studies have indicated that Latinos seem to have better health than their income levels would lead us to expect.

J Kishore: Dear Greg Duncan, it is well known that poverty is causing long term effects of childhood poverty. In India we say it is caste which is linked with poverty and such poor children belong to native castes remain poor performers in every field. International bodies are not recognizing caste in India a problem to a significant amount of children suffering from malnutrition and subsequent poor skill development. What will you suggest in such situation?
Greg Duncan: My research is US based, and I know little about the Indian context. A good source of information about ideas for developing countries is the MIT Poverty Action Lab: http://www.povertyactionlab.org.

Beth Mattingly: What are the factors that promote resiliency among children exposed to poverty at a very young age? How much do these vary by timing and duration of childhood poverty?
Greg Duncan: Our study was focused on income itself, and we found that poverty in the very early years was the most likely to scar later development. Low income later in childhood mattered much less. So the “timing” issue as it relates to the age of the child appears to be very important. As to promoting resilience, I can think of both parent and child factors. Ensuring that the pregnancy and the child’s early years are not severely stressed involved adequate prenatal care and, after the birth, genuine choice over when the mother returns to the labor force. Workplace leave policies and state welfare programs can work against the needed degree of choice. As to child-based factors, I would put most of my money into early education programs, since a child starting school ready to learn has the greatest chance of later academic successes.

Mil Duncan: What do we know about the individual characteristics, family circumstances and neighborhood conditions of those who escape poverty?
Greg Duncan: Hi Mil. Good (and tough) questions! Despite our focus on intergenerational poverty, research does show that most children who grow up poor or in welfare dependent households are not themselves persistently poor or welfare dependent when they become adults. That said, there is certainly a substantial correlation between the economic standing of parents and grown children. In looking for characteristics that matter the most for escaping, the child’s completed schooling level is by far the most important, with each additional year of education producing close to a 10% increase in lifetime earnings. Evidence is mounting that neighborhood conditions matter much less than family conditions—once you account for the powerful role parent education plays and the selective role that income appears to play, it is hard to see many neighborhood effects. And recent mobility experiments have confirmed that most child outcomes (test scores, for example) fail to improve when children move with their families from very poor to somewhat more affluent neighborhoods.

Dr. Josephine Alumanah: How can the parents/Guardians be empowered? How can poverty be eradicated? Prevention is better than cure, don’t we think?
Greg Duncan: The answer to these questions would fill volumes! My research is US-based, where income supports are closely tied to work, and public education is available to all. If I were to pick one intervention it would be education—beginning in the preschool years with a high-quality, curriculum-based program, and continuing through college. As you probably know, the quality of education has declined with the recession and even before the recession the US had fallen behind many countries in its production of college graduates. This is most worrisome. As to parent empowerment, I spent several years evaluating a highly effective effective work-support program in Milwaukee called New Hope. It offered a bundle of supports—earnings supplements, childcare subsidies, health insurance subsidies and a temporary community service job—for adults willing to commit to full time work. A random-assignment evaluation showed that the children in New Hope families—particularly the boys—did much better than their control-group counterparts. The MDRC.org website documents the program and its impacts (http://www.mdrc.org/project_8_30.html), as does the book Higher Ground: New Hope for Low Income Families and Their Children (http://www.newhopebook.com).

Diana Lavery: Hi Dr. Duncan – I recently read a few studies about the positive effects of social networks on health and well-being. I’m wondering if there were differences in children who grow up in poverty and have strong social networks (such as more “collective” communities, e.g. Hispanic and Asian) vs. children who grow up in poverty and have weak social networks (such as more “individualistic” communities, e.g. white and black). I know that there weren’t statistically significant racial differences in your analysis, but were there differences by strength of social networks? If there were, perhaps this would be useful when considering types of preventative programs.
Greg Duncan: Great question. There is a body of research on the role of neighborhood “collective efficacy”—the degree to which neighbors look out for one another—that is relevant. Rob Sampson, Steve Raudenbush and Tony Earls published a paper in Science that linked collective efficacy to child outcomes (Science 15 August 1997: Vol. 277. no. 5328, pp. 918 – 924). On the other hand, in the mobility experiment I mentioned to Mil Duncan, moving to more affluent neighborhoods increased collective efficacy but did not improve most child outcomes. The website http://www.nber.org/mtopublic has collected all of the studies associated with this experiment. Some research studies on child outcomes find that, relative to whites and controlling for family circumstances, Asian children do better, but it is hard to infer what it might be about Asian communities or families that makes the difference.

Diana Lavery: Since early childhood poverty is associated with lower health and lower productivity in adulthood, what do you think the best intervention would be to assist children in poverty today? Should interventions be more education oriented, more health/nutrition oriented, or something else?
Greg Duncan: The research I summarized concerned income-based poverty in the United States (Duncan, G. J., Ziol-Guest, K. M. and Kalil, A. (2010), Early-Childhood Poverty and Adult Attainment, Behavior, and Health. Child Development, 81: 306–325). There are several U.S. programs that have the potential for transferring more income to low-income families with young children—the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit are two prominent examples. Each could be geared to pay relative larger benefits to families with younger children and less to families with older children. Other direct service programs such as Early Childhood Education (e.g., pre-kindergarten) programs could help as well. Whatever we choose, we should support programs with proven track records of providing more benefits than costs.

Recession and Recovery: How Are Americans Affected?

September 15, 2010

View webcast (Time: 48 minutes)

On July 12, 2010, the Population Association of America (PAA), in cooperation with Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Charles Schumer, and Reps. Vern Ehlers, Rush Holt, Carolyn Maloney, and Lucille Roybal-Allard, sponsored a presentation at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., on recession, recovery, and families in the United States. PRB was one of the co-sponsors.

Americans are facing the greatest economic challenges since the Great Depression. In June 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent, with 14.6 million people unemployed. The Census Bureau reported that real median household income has declined, and that in 2008, the nation’s poverty rate was 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2007. Furthermore, a record 2.8 million properties had a mortgage in foreclosure.

Although efforts to jumpstart the economy have mainly focused on helping the economic sector, it is also important to examine the plight of families and individuals, particularly those who are most vulnerable. Recent data are able to document the effects of the recession and, in some cases, speculate on what the longer-term consequences of recession and recovery could be, based on longitudinal surveys conducted by demographers at PAA.

Matthew Stagner of the University of Chicago opened the session. Speakers then covered data from surveys on three population groups, ranging from older Americans to children. Michael Hurd, director of the Center for the Study of Aging at the RAND Corporation, discussed the older population, using data from the Health and Retirement Study. Kathleen Mullan Harris of the University of North Carolina talked about young adults, using data from the Adolescent Survey of Health. Greg Duncan of the University of California–Irvine presented results on the long-term impact on children, using data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics.

Presentations

Matthew Stagner, University of Chicago, “Introduction” (Time: 0:00 – 6:00)

Michael Hurd, RAND Corporation, “Impact of the Recession on Older Americans” (Time: 6:00 – 21:10)

Kathleen Mullan Harris, University of North Carolina, “Impact of the Recession on Young Adults” (Time: 21:11 – 33:20)

Greg Duncan, University of California–Irvine, “Long Reach of Early Childhood Poverty on Children” (Time: 33:22 – 48:00)

PRB Discuss Online: How Are the Children of Single Mothers Faring? Evidence From the Fragile Families Study

February 18, 2010

The percentage of U.S. children born outside marriage has increased dramatically over several decades, growing from 6 percent of all births in 1960 to nearly 40 percent of births today. The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study has been following a cohort of approximately 3,600 children born to unmarried parents at the turn of the 21st century to learn more about these families, investigating, among other issues, the capabilities and circumstances of these parents and the nature of their relationships at birth. What happens to parents’ relationships and capabilities over time? How well do children in fragile families fare? What role do welfare state policies play in the lives of parents and children?

During a PRB Discuss Online, Sara McLanahan, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and principal investigator on the Fragile Families Study, answered participants’ questions about the challenges and realities that confront the children of unmarried parents—and how these children and their parents are faring.

Thank all of you for submitting questions for Professor McLanahan and for following the discussion. Because of the large volume of questions, she was not able to respond to all of them during the session. You can find more information about this research at www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/.

Feb. 18, 2010 1 PM EST

Transcript of Questions and Answers

ABDUL MALIK GHAURI: giving property of husband to wife in case of divorce appears to be a major reason avoiding formal marriages so should not the laws are needed to be amended to make formal marriage a simple and easy affair?
Sara McLanahan: most of the couples who are having children outside marriage do not have any wealth so i doubt that property law is a big factor in their decisions about marriage

Andrew Cummings: homes or are they to a unwed couple or a non-traditional couple? Do the policies and practices of the welfare state just create more welfare families?
Sara McLanahan: about half of non-marital births in the US are to cohabiting parents and about 30 percent are to couples who are in a romantic relationship but living apart. In theory, programs that are highly income-tested should discourage marriage. This is not the case for welfare state programs that are not income-tested (e.g. public education).

Holly Stover: Is there a region where there are more occurrences of single parents? Is there a higher occurrence in any one socio-economic status over another? How likely are these children to obtain higher education?
Sara McLanahan: Non-marital childbearing is strongly associated with socio-economic status and minority status. Between 30% and 40% of unmarried mothers and fathers lack a high school degree and less than 3% have finished college. African Americans and Hispanics have higher rates of non-marital childbearing than whites, even after adjusting for SES With respect to region, non-marital childbearing rates are higher in states with high levels of poverty and a high proportion of minorities.

Israrul Haque: What do you think will be the effect on American society when 40% [of] the birth will be comprising of illegal children born out of wedlock [missing] the [care] and affection of their father. Is it not a matter of great concern for any society? What the present administration plan to restrict this irresponsible behavior?
Sara McLanahan: Non-marital childbearing is not equivalent to single motherhood. About 50% of non-marital births in the US are to cohabiting couples. Indeed, in some countries (e.g. sweden and france), where non-marital childbearing rates are even higher than in the US, close to 90 percent of unmarried couples are cohabiting. And these cohabiting unions can be very stable. the problem is that in the US, cohabiting parent unions are not very stable and thus these children are experiencing a great deal of instability. the US government is currently funding programs to promote stable marriage and encourage father involvement, and these programs are being evaluated. for move information, google “Building Strong Families” or “Strengthening Healthy Marriage”

Ralph Yehle: How do children of mixed-race living in households with a single-race parent do compared to children living with a same race parent?
Sara McLanahan: i don’t have any data on this question

Meryl Goodwin: I am intrigued by the name “Fragile Families Study.” It seems like very judgemental language, and the researchers are implying that these families are more fragile right off the bat before the research was even conducted. What was the hypothesis before the study started? I am curious about the methodology because just from the title, it already seems biased against births out of wedlock.
Sara McLanahan: Before we began the study, we knew (from demographic research) that cohabiting and dating couples were much more likely to end their partnerships than married couples. We also knew these parents were less educated and more likely to be poor than married parents. For these two reasons, we used the word “fragile.” At the same time, we used the word “family” to underscore that fact that these couples and their child are connected both biologically and socially, Indeed, prior to our study, many analyists thought most non-marital births were the produce of casual relationships. A major finding from our study is that 80 percent of these parents are in a romantic relationship at the time of their child’s birth.

Ntoimo Favour C.: Dr McLanahan, Please how can I access the full text of this current research on how children of single mothers are faring? I am doing a PhD research on never married women age 30 to 59, some of whom are single mothers.
Sara McLanahan: Everything about the study, including research papers, data description, etc. is available at:
http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/

Raïq, Hicham: Thanks for this interesting topic. For me the question is how to help single mothers to balance work and care activities. In the American context of workfare, what is the impact on single mothers’ poverty ? How [many] single mothers are poor as compared to other families?
Sara McLanahan: poverty rates are high among unmarried mothers. Whereas 14% of married mothers are poor at the time their child is born, the number is 53% for unmarried mothers who are living alone and 32% for unmarried mothers who are cohabiting with child’s father.

Emeka Nwosu, Nigeria: Is it not better to have kids in a marriage
Sara McLanahan: on average, children born to married parents have better outcomes than children born to unmarried parents. But this does not mean that all children born to unmarried parents do worse than all children born to married parents. Parents’ marital status at birth increases a child’s risk of having a bad outcome, but it does not mean that a bad outcome is inevitable.

Dr. Anima Sharma: Hi, This is a very contemporary issue w.r.t. every country and as the question-mark suggests further elaboration, hence I will narrate few of my findings on this board. I am an Indian and as being an Anthropologist, I have studied several rural, urban and tribal communities. I have found that there could [be] several types of single mothers- widowed, separated, divorced, unmarried, single mothers who have adopted the child(ren), women raising children singlehandedly as their hudbands are working elsewhere (military/ business), etc. Single mothers living in rural areas or living within a network (social or professional) face lesser adversities while those living in urban areas face more challenges sometimes addressing the issue of survival. Hence, when we analyse the performance of the children of single mothers then we should take into account all these factors. Sometimes they do well professionally but face several psychological problems. Sometimes their psychological problems ride upon their professional and social life. Sometimes due to persistent struggle on economic frnts makes them aggresive or at the other times they are humbled by it. I have seen several of these types personally. I also would like to make this topic more specific by understanding that what does author mean by faring, that is economically, career-wise, socially…what? There are children who have shown outstanding performance as one of my colleagues. But I am sure that he would have been different if he would not be holding his family treasure. Thus economic insecurity plays a vital role. But on the whole, I have found that it is a good topic for conducting multi-disciplinary research, cross-sectionally.
Sara McLanahan: i agree that there is a good deal of variation within different types of single-mother families. I also agree that there is variation in child outcomes. Finally, i very much agree about the value of interdisciplinary research. We have economists, sociologists, demographers and psychologists on our research team. We also have an ethnographer who has followed about 50 of these families over time and conducted indepth interviews with mothers and fathers.

Elizabeth Bocaletti: What’s the relationship between single mothers and sociocultural, education and age factors?
Sara McLanahan: As compared with married mothers, unmarried mothers are younger, much less educated, and much more likely to be of minority status. With respect to attitudes, unmarried mothers place a high value on marriage and many say they plan to marry. Unmarried mothers report about the same level of relationship quality as married mothers – at the time of child’s birth. Finally, unmarried mothers are somewhat more distrustful of men than married mothers and they are also more likely to believe that “a single mother can raise a child alone.”

Robert Prentiss: I recall seeing a study that indicated that children growing up with single mothers who gave them little care or support who accepted that they were unwanted fared better than similarly treated children who made excuses for their mothers and lived in hope things would change? Do you know of any studies on coping mechanisms of such children?
Sara McLanahan: I’ve never heard about this finding. There is a large literature in psychology about the coping mechanisms of children of divorce. Mavis Hetherington is a good place to start

Joy Francis: Can you state if children of single mothers fare better than children of single fathers? Does the study examine this issue?
Sara McLanahan: The evidence i have seen suggests that children of single mothers and single fathers do about the same. However, it’s not really a fair comparison because children raised by a single father are a pretty select group, especially young children

Meskerem Bekele, Ethiopia: In our country, even if I couldn’t found what the research saying about this issue I don’t think that children without marriage is … much problem for us. Our culture also couldn’t encourage this kind of things. When I discussed with my friend about this kind issue, most of the time she said that if husband and wife couldn’t live together peacefully, this is going to be more difficult for the children. And she believe that it is better to have children without marriage than children with hard or bad marriage. What do you think? and what research said about this?
Sara McLanahan: you are correct that living in a high conflict home is not good for children, especially if the conflict is about the child. some studies have shown that children in high conflict situtataions are better off after their parents divorce.

Jann Anguish: In the title of the article “single mothers” are referred to. In the article itself “unmarried parents” are referred to. Does this mean that some are single mothers while other children are born to couples that live together (or not) but are not married? Does this take into account that individual children have different coping skills, some, just by their nature, are going to be fine and grow to their full potential, while others are going to be scarred by a fragile, disfunctional family.
Sara McLanahan: you are right about the title being a bit confusing. single mothers would include women who divorced whereas unmarried mothers would include women in stable unions. in our study, we started at the hospitals and interviewed mothers who were married and unmarried at birth. and we followed these families over time. So in our study unmarried is not the same as single I agree that children respond differently to family disruption and disfunction, in part because of differences in biology.

Cecily Westermann: Hi, Dr. McLanahan: [Don’t] at least some of the plusses for married parents boil down to logistics of raising children? For example, with two parents in the home, one or the other would be available to take a child to the dentist or attend school functions?
Sara McLanahan: ABSOLUTELY – four hands are better than two, all else being equal.

Deborah: Thanks for this important discussion. I am hoping that your distinguished speaker will say a bit about the extent to which socioeconomic status (SES) of single mothers might be a key factor in their children’s well-being. In other words, is this particular research about the welfare of children of single mothers, or rather more specifically, about the welfare of children of low-income/less educated single mothers? I think the distinction is important. These days in the US, it seems increasingly common (although still not the norm) for highly educated and relatively wealthy women to choose single motherhood. Do we know anything about the welfare of these children? Basically I am wondering if it is “singleness” per se that is a problematic factor, or is socioeconomic status perhaps a more fundamental factor in a child’s well-being? Generally speaking, it is the latter, would it be more logical or “scientific” for relevant studies to ask “How are the Children of Low-Income Mothers Faring?” and include singlehood as an important individual characteristic or risk factor (instead of asking “How are the Children of Single Mothers Faring?” and treating education/income/occupation as an individual characteristics). Unless research to-date gives evidence for singlehood as being a primary causal factor in child’s welfare *regardless of mother’s education and income*, I worry that highlighting mothers’ marital status in such studies does as much (or more) to support moral judgments about the inappropriateness of raising children out-of-wedlock, than to direct accurately concern about the possibly more fundamental factors important to child welfare. Thank you and I look forward to hearing comments from Professor McLanahan.
Sara McLanahan: You are right that non-marital childbearing has increased among college educated mothers. However, the number of women in this situation is still very small. In our sample of unmarried mothers (which is nationally representative of births in large cities), only 3% of mothers have a college degree, whereas 40 percent have no high school degree. Of the remaining mothers (57 percent) about half have a high school degree and about half have some college but no degree. All of the analyses we conduct control for differences in mothers’ education, age, race, income, etc. However, because the number of college educated mothers is so small, it’s very difficult to assess how the children of these mothers are doing.

Maria-Paula Garcia: Does your study look into the motivations these mothers have to have children? Are there any common themes in the way they perceive themselves as mothers?
Sara McLanahan: we didn’t really look at this question, in part because we were interviewing mothers right after the birth and we weren’t sure we would get very accurate answers.

Miguel A. Izquierdo S: Are there evidences of some kind of “resilence” from these children, that let them recover in some grade from its condition?
Sara McLanahan: we haven’t really study the predictors of resilence. we know it’s there because many children born to unmarried parents do just as well as children born to married parents. focusing on the ones that overcome the odds is a good idea. by the way, the data are publically available – see our website at http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/

Sanjay Mishra: Is there a raedymade solution to resolve this issue, specially in the developed countries where state is not in position to bear the economic burden of such mothers and children, and mothers may be compelled to go on in illicit trade or the child may go in unhealthy profession like ragpicking or any other else, so to mainstream such children after a certain age and the mother may become a larger problem.
Sara McLanahan: as yet, no one has identified a great solution. there are many proposed strategies, including improving relationship skills, improving employment opportunities and earnings and just preventing unintended pregnancies.

Rahat Bari Tooheen: Single mothers and their children are a special group of individuals with distinct needs and futures. Perhaps existing regulations are insufficient for them. Regulation wise, what should be done to make their lives easier?
Sara McLanahan: there are several proposals for how to overcome the problems associated with non-marital childbearing. First, prevent unintended pregnancies, since many non-marital births results from unintended pregnancies; second, increase marriage and marital stability by (a) increasing parents’ human capital and economic resources or (b) increasing relationship skills.

Gregory Kington: What is the percentage of foreclosed properties that belonged to single parents wiht children living in them? Any trends regarding them?
Sara McLanahan: i don’t know the answer to this question. we do know, however, that high rates of unemployment during the recent recession are associated with ‘material hardship’ which includes not being able to pay rent and being evicted.

Joy Francis: Does the study makes any comparisons between chidren with both parents and chidren with single mothers? For example, is more money spent with single parents? How do children in single parent households perform in school academically?
Sara McLanahan: we make lots of comparisons between children with two parents and children with one parent. we also compare children living with two cohabiting parents and children living with two married parents. Children living with married parents have much higher family incomes so we assume that more is spent on these children. Children living with cohabiting parents have less income than children living with married parents because cohabiting parents have less education and lower earnings. Cohabiting parents are also less likely to pool their incomes.
These various family structures are associated with children’s cognitive test scores and behavior problems including attention, agression and anxiety/depression. Children living with married parents do best and those living with single mothers do worst. Instability in family structure is also associated with poor outcomes in children. see our working papers at http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/

Hazel Denton: I recently read a study (the author’s name escapes me) which tracked women who gave birth as teenagers against a control group of their peers. Turns out the ‘mothers’ did as well as the ‘non-mothers’ with the hint that perhaps the responsibility and pressures of parenthood had a positive effect. Do you find this outcome surprising?
Sara McLanahan: Yes, i find this surprising – i know that there are lots of studies using statistical techniques to determine the ‘effect’ of teen births. my understanding is that some of these studies find no adverse effects on mothers but they still find adverse effects on children

Andrew Barnes: Would be interested to know more about the educational attainment and employment history of the parents themselves. Is there a growing trend of unwed and single parents that are college educated and or have high paying jobs?
Sara McLanahan: non-marital childbearing is strongly associated with low SES in the US. Although this phenomenon has increased among college educated mothers (as it has among all mothers), it is still quite rare among high SES women.

Becky S: Hi Dr. McLanahan. I’m involved in research concerning youth. I wondered if you had any information on social and/or health outcomes of children born into single parent homes versus other family structures?
Sara McLanahan: yes, we have lots of findings on the association between family structure and child health. Go to the fragile families website and click under publications. then look for papers on child health http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/

Carmen Solomon-Fears: Has there been any research on the outcomes of children with the same mother and different fathers in which the mother marries one of the childrens’ father–how do the children living with a nonbioligical father fare? (Are the findings the same as the research that indicate that children living with non-biological parents fare worse than children with both biological parents?)
Sara McLanahan: Both children do worse in such families.

Kim Holdsworth: In my region, 14% of children live in single father households. Can you speak to the outcomes of this group specifically? Are the outcomes seemingly (or measurably) different than for children raised in single-mother households?
Sara McLanahan: As far as I know, studies that compare the children of single mothers and single fathers find no difference in child outcomes. However, single father families are such a special group, I’m not sure what to make of this finding. on the one hand, we might expect those in single father families to have worse outcomes because something unusal has happened to them to get them into this status. on the other hand, we might expect them to have better outcomes because single fathers are a special group of very committed parents.

Lisa: In Colorado, we have below the national average rates of single-parent families. Our rate of increase is also comparable to the U.S. However, our rate of singe-parents falling into poverty is increasing. This makes sense, as single-parent families have fewer resources to adjust to changing economic circumstances. I’m having a hard time communicating that single-parent families are not the CAUSE of the rise in childhood poverty. Any suggestions?
Sara McLanahan: my take on this issue is that single motherhood and non-marital motherhood are both a cause and a consequence of poverty. it’s very clear that poverty is a strong predictor of single motherhood. At the same time, i think there is good evidence that single motherhood itself further reduces children’s life chances, thus reproducing the cycle of poverty

Ellen Fineberg: Is there data in the study that shows why women often are the single parents rather than men?
Sara McLanahan: i don’t believe so

Nadwa: Do we know anything about the impact of the recent recession on children of single mothers?
Sara McLanahan: we are just beginning to investigate this question. we have been in the field since 2007 collecting data on children at age 9 and we will be able to say a lot about how these families are affected by the recession. but it’s a little eary to draw conclusions.

Rachel Naiukow: Have you looked into the possible positive effects of “kinship” or strong family/mentor presence and therefore lessening the negative effects of children born to un-wed parents? Or how much of an effect would you wager this has? At least then an intervention could work towards building more readily available support system for single parents.
Sara McLanahan: in theory, i totally agree that access to extended family support should reduce the negative consequences associated with single parenthood. however, the studies i’ve seen thus far have not been able to show that living with a grandmother or having family support makes much difference.

Traci Hisatake: I’m not sure if I can articulate my thoughts but here’s my attempt: Maybe the question is not marriage vs. non-marriage/single parents, demographics, family variables, etc. but the reasons why women are having children. What does it mean to have children, the expectations and responsibilities of parents and families in raising children. With economic and environmental changes, cultural and society system changes, individuals and family units have not been able to internalize and make conscious decisions about their goals. Many are just trying to survive the changes. I think the focus should be on the meaning of and responsibilities of what marriage, partnership, parents, children, social, etc.
Sara McLanahan: i agree that we need to know much more about the meanings people attach to marriage and parenthood and how these have changed over time.

Joy Francis: Sociologists who have examined single mothers have found that those mothers are rarely raising their children single-handedly. Instead, they have networks of friends and relatives and neighbors who care about them and their children, especially grandparents and have been part of their lives for years. Is this true statement?
Sara McLanahan: yes, it’s true that many single mothers have help from extended family. it’s also the case (in our study) that these mothers have many partnerships with ‘social fathers.’ as i mentioned in a previous answer, however, I’ve not seen good evidence that extended family involvement compensates for the absence of a biological father. moreover, there is good evidence that multiple partnerships are negatively associated with parenting quality and child wellbeing.

Laurie Maldonado: How are the children of single parents faring in other countries?
Sara McLanahan: the pattern of non-marital childbearing is the same in all western industrialized countries, that is, women with low education are more likely than women with high education to have children outside marriage. Although some studies (e.g. sweden) find no difference between children born to married and unmarried parents, a majority of studies find negative consequences for children raised by single mothers.

child well-being

Transcript of Questions and Answers

Transcript of Questions and Answers

Transcript of Questions and Answers

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