Showing papers by "Irwin Garfinkel published in 2014"

Social disadvantage, genetic sensitivity, and children’s telomere length

Abstract: Disadvantaged social environments are associated with adverse health outcomes. This has been attributed, in part, to chronic stress. Telomere length (TL) has been used as a biomarker of chronic stress: TL is shorter in adults in a variety of contexts, including disadvantaged social standing and depression. We use data from 40, 9-y-old boys participating in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to extend this observation to African American children. We report that exposure to disadvantaged environments is associated with reduced TL by age 9 y. We document significant associations between low income, low maternal education, unstable family structure, and harsh parenting and TL. These effects were moderated by genetic variants in serotonergic and dopaminergic pathways. Consistent with the differential susceptibility hypothesis, subjects with the highest genetic sensitivity scores had the shortest TL when exposed to disadvantaged social environments and the longest TL when exposed to advantaged environments.

The Prevalence and Economic Value of Doubling Up

Abstract: “Doubling up” (living with relatives or nonkin) is a common source of support for low-income families, yet no study to date has estimated its economic value relative to other types of public and private support. Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine the prevalence and economic value of doubling up among families with young children living in large American cities. We find that doubling up is a very important part of the private safety net in the first few years of a child’s life, with nearly 50 % of mothers reporting at least one instance of doubling up by the time their child is 9 years old. The estimated rental savings from doubling up is significant and comparable in magnitude to other public and private transfers.

Waging War on Poverty: Historical Trends in Poverty Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure

Abstract: Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the March Current Population Survey, we calculate historical poverty estimates based on the new Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) from 1967 to 2012. During this period, poverty as officially measured has stagnated. However, the official poverty measure (OPM) does not account for the effect of near-cash transfers on the financial resources available to families, an important omission since such transfers have become an increasingly important part of government anti-poverty policy. Applying the SPM, which does count such transfers, we find that historical trends in poverty have been more favorable than the OPM suggests and that government policies have played an important and growing role in reducing poverty --- a role that is not evident when the OPM is used to assess poverty. We also find that government programs have played a particularly important role in alleviating child poverty and deep poverty, especially during economic downturns.

Private Financial Transfers, Family Income, and the Great Recession.

Abstract: From December 2007 until June 2009, the United States experienced the Great Recession, its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression (Grusky, Western, & Wimer, 2011; National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010). The level of unemployment increased dramatically during this period, from approximately 5% to 10% in the country as a whole, although certain subgroups and geographic areas experienced particularly high levels (Hout, Levanon, & Cumberworth, 2011). Low-income families were one subgroup especially vulnerable to the poor economic conditions; estimates from the Current Population Survey indicate that unemployment rates in the lowest income decile were as high as 31% from October to December 2009 and were nearly 20% in the second lowest income decile (Sum & Khatiwada, 2010). Because the Great Recession was associated with such high levels of unemployment, especially among economically disadvantaged families, it is critical to understand how families in general, and low-income families in particular, manage to support themselves when unemployment levels are high and aggregate economic conditions are poor. Prior research has found that private financial transfers (PFTs), defined as financial support provided to the mother by anyone other than the child’s father, are a relatively common and potentially important source of income, particularly for families with young children. Research has found that PFTs are the most common source of private support for families with young children and are worth approximately 15% of mother’s earnings, suggesting PFTs are an important component of families’ income package (Pilkauskas & Alvarado-Urbina, 2014). In addition, studies have shown that PFTs are wealth enhancing for families with children (Hao, 1996) and are a key economic resource that helps low-income mothers make ends meet (Edin & Lein, 1997; Teitler, Reichman, & Nepomnyaschy, 2004). As a result, one way that families with young children may deal with bad aggregate economic conditions (and the increased need that they produce), like those experienced during the Great Recession, is to increase PFTs received from family members and nonrelatives. If, however, members of their network were also negatively affected by the poor economic conditions, network members may not have the means to provide families with children with PFTs. Thus, it is also possible that PFTs received tend to decrease when rates of unemployment are high. Determining whether families with young children are able to rely on an increase in PFT receipt when economic conditions are bad is critical because a long line of research has demonstrated that family income, and in particular family income in early childhood, is an important predictor of a wide range of outcomes for children (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997). In this study, we investigated three research questions. First, what is the association between the unemployment rate and PFT receipt among urban families with young children? Second, does family income moderate the association between the unemployment rate and PFTs received for this population? Third, how does the predicted probability of PFT receipt differ when the unemployment rate is at 5% (its level before the start of the Great Recession) compared to the peak unemployment rate during the Great Recession (10%)? Although prior research has studied whether aggregate unemployment is associated with the percentage of household income made up by PFTs (Haider & McGarry, 2006), no research has used longitudinal data (including families prior to, and during, the Great Recession), or studied families with young children in particular. In addition, no research has investigated differences in the association between the unemployment rate and PFTs by family income. This is an important oversight because evidence suggests that low-income families may have been particularly vulnerable to the Great Recession (Sum & Khatiwada, 2010). Even with this greater need, it is unclear that PFT receipt among low-income families will increase in poor economic conditions: The networks of low-income mothers may not have the economic resources necessary to provide PFTs as compared with higher income families. Last, no research has studied the impact of the Great Recession on PFTs by exploring the predicted probability of PFT receipt at different unemployment rates consistent with pre- and peak recession levels. To address these questions, we used data from the first five waves of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (hereafter Fragile Families; see www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/), covering the years 1998–2010. These longitudinal data were particularly well suited to this research because they provide significant variation in the unemployment rate over time, in particular because the latest wave of data collection occurred during the Great Recession. These data also include an oversample of unmarried births, resulting in a relatively economically disadvantaged sample, making it possible to study heterogeneity in the association between the unemployment rate and PFTs by family income levels.

Introduction: Two-Generation Mechanisms of Child Development

Abstract: Programs that aim to improve the lives of children from disadvantaged backgrounds are facing a challenge. On the one hand, scholars and policy makers agree that we must invest in children to secure our country's future and to promote educational and economic opportunity, suggesting that we should expand programs for children, especially during early childhood. (1) On the other hand, there is a growing sense in some quarters that existing programs for children are not working as well as they could. A few widely cited models, such as Perry Preschool and the Abecedarian Project, have demonstrated that high-quality programs can make a big difference in children's lives. (2) The children who participated in these programs have shown long-term gains in educational attainment, employment, and earnings relative to their peers, and those who participated in Perry Preschool had lower rates of arrest. The evidence from larger-scale efforts, such as Head Start and some state prekindergarten programs, is less clear-cut. On the one hand, numerous assessments of Head Start, the nation's largest preschool program, which enrolls about 900,000 mostly disadvantaged children, have found improvements in children's test scores, as well as their rates of high school graduation, college attendance, and delinquency, especially among children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Similarly, assessments of state prekindergarten programs, which have a much shorter history than Head Start, have found that in elementary school, the participants--especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds--had better language skills and were less likely to repeat a grade or be suspended. (3) On the other hand, a recent randomized trial of Head Start found that the test score gains children experienced at the end of the program typically faded by the end of kindergarten. (4) And a well-executed evaluation of a preschool intervention in Tennessee found a similar fade-out by the end of first grade. (5) It's not unusual for gains in cognitive test scores to fade--the same phenomenon occurred in the Perry Preschool and Abecedarian projects. Still, the recent Head Start and Tennessee evaluations have caused some people to doubt the efficacy of early childhood education and of universal prekindergarten more broadly. (6) Although it's too early to assess the long-term benefits of the new prekindergarten programs, it's hard to be optimistic that current programs can boost poor children's development enough to overcome the huge divide in educational achievement and economic opportunity between children from poor families and children from economically secure families. The United States has experienced a dramatic increase in income inequality over the past four decades, which, not surprisingly, has been accompanied by a growing income gap in children's test scores. (7) So even if the $30 billion or so that the federal and state governments spend on preschool programs and the $640 billion the nation spends on public education are having large effects, they are not large enough to compensate for the growing gap in achievement between children from high- and low-income families. (8) The school problems of poor children stem in large part from the home environment. Numerous studies show that parents and the home environment they provide exert a continuing influence on children as they grow up. (9) Betty Hart and Todd Risley, in their well-known study from nearly two decades ago, found major differences in the home language environments provided by poor and more affluent parents. They estimate that the average child on welfare is exposed to 62,000 words per week at home, compared with 125,000 words per week for more privileged children. (10) Similarly, based on the large sample of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Meredith Phillips shows very large differences, all of them favoring children from more affluent families, in time spent in conversation with adults, in primary caregivers' verbal responsiveness, and in time spent in literary activities. …

Waging War on Poverty: Historical Trends in Poverty Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure

Abstract: Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the March Current Population Survey, we calculate historical poverty estimates based on the new Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) from 1967 to 2012. During this period, poverty as officially measured has stagnated. However, the official poverty measure (OPM) does not account for the effect of near-cash transfers on the financial resources available to families, an important omission since such transfers have become an increasingly important part of government anti-poverty policy. Applying the SPM, which does count such transfers, we find that historical trends in poverty have been more favorable than the OPM suggests and that government policies have played an important and growing role in reducing poverty --- a role that is not evident when the OPM is used to assess poverty. We also find that government programs have played a particularly important role in alleviating child poverty and deep poverty, especially during economic downturns.

Wealth, Family Structure, and the Great Recession

Abstract: This paper examines the association between the Great Recession and wealth among families with young children. Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N=4,898), we investigate the association between unemployment and net worth and how the association varies by family structure – married, cohabiting, and single mothers. We find that a five percentage point change in the unemployment rate, akin to that of the Great Recession, is associated with net worth that is 46% lower, home net worth that is 44% lower, and car net worth that is 26% lower. We also find that the recession was associated with higher odds of home loss and for single mothers, higher car loss. Although the absolute decline in wealth was largest for married families, as a percent of total wealth, cohabiting and single mothers experienced the largest losses.