Pandemic income support programs and adolescent mental health in the UK, Ireland, and Australia.

After cutting social security in recent decades, the UK, Ireland, and Australia expanded income-support programs during the pandemic. Relatively overlooked, this paper investigates policy responses among younger generations, the socioeconomic disparities therein, and whether and which of these policies, now rolled back, were most beneficial. I rely on longitudinal survey data on adolescents and their caregivers.

Parental unemployment and children's educational attainment: How big is the role of aspirations?

Children exposed to parental unemployment have been found to lag behind in school, but research has struggled to pin down the underlying explanation. One hypothesis is that parental unemployment may dampen children's aspirations to do well and go far in school. Yet, few studies on parental unemployment have relied on actual measures of children's aspirations or devised a formal analysis of this mechanism.

Do high-income households 'label' family cash benefits? Evidence on family expenditures from Australia.

This study examines family expenditures and how they respond to the provision of family cash transfers, particularly among higher-income families. Naming cash benefits with explicit reference to 'families' or 'children' can nudge households into labelling the extra cash for financial investments in children. Labelling has mainly been assessed among lower-income families.

The timing of parental unemployment, insurance and children's education.

The timing of parental unemployment can impact children's educational transitions. Previous research has mostly examined transitions to higher education, proxying timing in relation to children's age and often focusing on selective populations. We study unemployment's intergenerational effects at multiple stages of the educational career, and define timing relative to important crossroads within and across school years for a broader population of children.

Parental Job Loss and Early Child Development in the Great Recession.

The study examines whether and why parental job loss may stifle early child development, relying on cohort data from the population of children born in Ireland in 2007-2008 (N = 6,303) and followed around the time of the Great Recession (2008-2013). A novel approach to mediation analysis is deployed, testing expectations from models of family investment and family stress. Parental job loss exacerbates problem behavior at ages 3 and 5 (.