Family wealth and adolescent physical health.

Inequalities in the distribution of wealth among families with children may have deleterious health consequences, especially for adolescent children. Marked by significant psychosocial and physiological changes, adolescence is a period when socioeconomic differences in chronic disease risk factors are observed. Unfortunately, research on socioeconomic inequalities in adolescent health has overlooked wealth, focusing instead on differences in health based on household income and parental educational attainment.

The Buffering Effect of State Eviction and Foreclosure Policies for Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic spurred an economic downturn that may have eroded population mental health, especially for renters and homeowners who experienced financial hardship and were at risk of housing loss. Using household-level data from the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey (n = 805,223; August 2020-August 2021) and state-level data on eviction/foreclosure bans, we estimated linear probability models with two-way fixed effects to (1) examine links between COVID-related financial hardship and anxiety/depression and (2) assess whether state eviction/foreclosure bans buffered the detrimental mental health impacts of financial hardship. Findings show that individuals who reported difficulty paying for household expenses and keeping up with rent or mortgage had increased anxiety and depression risks but that state eviction/foreclosure bans weakened these associations.

Marriage, Kids, and the Picket Fence? Household Type and Wealth among U.S. Households, 1989 to 2019.

Evidence on how parenthood impacts household wealth in the United States has been inconclusive, partially because previous studies have decontextualized parenthood from gender, marital, and relationship status. Yet, insights from economic sociology suggest that wealth-related behaviors are shaped by the intersection of identities, not by a binary classification of parental status. We examine net worth by the intersection of gender, parental, and relationship status during a period of increasing wealth inequality and family diversification.

Heightened immigration enforcement impacts US citizens' birth outcomes: Evidence from early ICE interventions in North Carolina.

We examine how increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities impacted newborn health and prenatal care utilization in North Carolina around the time Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act was first being implemented within the state. Focusing on administrative data between 2004 and 2006, we conduct difference-in-differences and triple-difference case-control regression analysis. Pregnancies were classified by levels of potential exposure to immigration enforcement depending on parental nativity and educational attainment.

Social Class Divergence in Family Transitions: The Importance of Cohabitation.

Objective: This study examined trends in familial transitions by maternal education and whether transitions rose because of changes in prevalence (the share of children exposed to a relationship state, either marriage or cohabitation) or churning (the number of entrances and exits conditional on being exposed to a relationship state).

Background: Children's experiences of transitions, an important predictor of well-being, have leveled off in recent decades. Plateauing in transitions may reflect heterogeneity by socioeconomic status.

Children and the Elderly: Wealth Inequality Among America's Dependents.

Life cycle theory predicts that elderly households have higher levels of wealth than households with children, but these wealth gaps are likely dynamic, responding to changes in labor market conditions, patterns of debt accumulation, and the overall economic context. Using Survey of Consumer Finances data from 1989 through 2013, we compare wealth levels between and within the two groups that make up America's dependents: the elderly and child households (households with a resident child aged 18 or younger). Over the observed period, the absolute wealth gap between elderly and child households in the United States increased substantially, and diverging trends in wealth accumulation exacerbated preexisting between-group disparities.

Local Job Losses and Child Maltreatment: The Importance of Community Context.

A growing body of literature suggests that economic downturns predict an increase in child maltreatment. However, to inform policies and practices to prevent and intervene in child maltreatment, it is necessary to identify how, when, and under what conditions community-level economic conditions affect child maltreatment. In this study, we use North Carolina administrative data from 2006 to 2011 on child maltreatment reports and job losses to distinguish effects on maltreatment frequency from effects on severity, identify the timing of these effects, and test whether community characteristics moderate these effects.

They Should Say "I Don't": Norms About Midpregnancy Marriage and Job Loss.

This study examined effects of local economic conditions on individuals' attitudes toward midpregnancy marriages using an experimental vignette method. Adults (N = 460) were each shown two vignettes about a hypothetical couple expecting a baby; within each vignette pair, vignettes randomly varied as to whether the couple lived in a community that had recently experienced job losses or had stable employment. Respondents indicated if the couple should and will get married before the baby's birth.

Midpregnancy Marriage and Divorce: Why the Death of Shotgun Marriage Has Been Greatly Exaggerated.

Conventional wisdom holds that births following the colloquially termed "shotgun marriage"-that is, births to parents who married between conception and the birth-are nearing obsolescence. To investigate trends in shotgun marriage, we matched North Carolina administrative data on nearly 800,000 first births among white and black mothers to marriage and divorce records. We found that among married births, midpregnancy-married births (our preferred term for shotgun-married births) have been relatively stable at about 10 % over the past quarter-century while increasing substantially for vulnerable population subgroups.

How Economic Downturns Affect Children's Development: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Pathways of Influence.

To understand how economic downturns affect children's development, scholars have concentrated on how parents' loss of a job affects children's well-being, but have largely ignored the potential effects of downturns on children whose parents remain employed. In this article, we review research across disciplines to demonstrate that economic downturns should be conceptualized as a community-level event that affects all children in a community, not just those whose parents have lost jobs. We focus on three mechanisms linking downturns to children's developmental outcomes: structural changes to communities, the economic and psychological effects on individuals who are continuously employed, and the strain of job loss on social networks.

Breastfeeding and the child cognitive outcomes: a propensity score matching approach.

To estimate the effect of breastfeeding initiation and duration on child development outcomes. 3,271 children and their mothers participating in the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics provide data for these analyses. Main outcomes include Woodcock Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised (WJ-R) test score (letter word, passage comprehension, applied problem, and broad reading), and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) test score at the 2002 survey.

The effect of the WIC program on the health of newborns.

Objective: To determine the effect of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on birth outcomes.

Data Source: The Child Development Supplement (CDS) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The PSID provides extensive data on the income and well-being of a representative sample of U.

Early childhood family structure and mother-child interactions: variation by race and ethnicity.

With data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (n = 6,449), a nationally representative sample of births in 2001, we used hierarchical linear modeling to analyze differences in observed interactions between married, cohabiting, never-married, and divorced mothers and their children. In contrast to previous studies, we concentrated on early childhood, a developmentally critical period that has been understudied in the family structure literature, and relied on objective observational measures of mother-child interactions, which are unlikely to be biased by maternal perceptions of interactions with children. Nonmarital family structures were common in the lives of young children, as 32% lived outside of a married, biological parent home.

Breastfeeding and verbal ability of 3-year-olds in a multicity sample.

Objectives: Our goal was to analyze the effect of maternal verbal ability and education on the association between breastfeeding and children's cognitive functioning. First, we hypothesized that maternal verbal abilities account for a large portion of the association between breastfeeding and child verbal abilities. Second, we hypothesized that after adjusting for maternal verbal abilities, a positive effect of breastfeeding will be most evident among highly educated mothers, because these mothers may have more opportunity to engage in cognitively stimulating parenting than do mothers with less education.

Connecting child care quality to child outcomes: drawing policy lessons from nonexperimental data.

Effective early childhood intervention and child care policies should be based on an understanding of the effects of child care quality and type on child well-being. This article describes methods for securing unbiased estimates of these effects from nonexperimental data. It focuses on longitudinal studies like the one developed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Early Child Care Research Network.

Couples' immigration status and ethnicity as determinants of breastfeeding.

Objectives: We investigated how couples' immigration status and ethnicity determined the decision to initiate breastfeeding and to breastfeed at 6 months.

Methods: From data collected on 4207 mothers and 3013 fathers participating in a longitudinal birth cohort study, we used linear regression and covariate-adjusted proportions to estimate the determinants of breastfeeding behaviors. The sample was divided by immigration status (either foreign born or born in the United States) and further subdivided by ethnicity (Mexican Hispanic, non-Mexican Hispanic, and non-Hispanic).