Heather D. Hill

Maternal employment and the health of low-income young children

This study examines whether maternal employment affects the health status of low-income, elementary-school-aged children using instrumental variables estimation and experimental data from a welfare-to-work program implemented in the early 1990s. Maternal report of child health status is predicted as a function of exogenous variation in maternal employment associated with random assignment to the experimental group. IV estimates show a modest adverse effect of maternal employment on childrens health. Making use of data from another welfare-to-work program we propose that any adverse effect on child health may be tempered by increased family income and access to public health insurance coverage, findings with direct relevance to a number of current policy discussions. In a secondary analysis using fixed effects techniques on longitudinal survey data collected in 1998 and 2001, we find a comparable adverse effect of maternal employment on child health that supports the external validity of our primary result.

Paid Sick Leave and Job Stability.

A compelling, but unsubstantiated, argument for paid sick leave legislation is that workers with leave are better able to address own and family member health needs without risking a voluntary or involuntary job separation. This study tests that claim using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and regression models controlling for a large set of worker and job characteristics, as well as with propensity score techniques. Results suggest that paid sick leave decreases the probability of job separation by at least 2.5 percentage points, or 25%. The association is strongest for workers without paid vacation leave and for mothers.

Covered Today, Sick Tomorrow? Trends and Correlates of Children’s Health Insurance Instability

Many children with health insurance will experience gaps in coverage over time, potentially reducing their access to and use of preventive health care services. This article uses the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine how the stability of children’s health insurance changed between 1990 and 2005 and to identify dynamic aspects of family life associated with transitions in coverage. Children’s health insurance instability has increased since the early 1990s, due to greater movement between insured and uninsured states and between private and public insurance coverage. Changes in the employment and marital status of the family head are highly associated with an increased risk of a child losing and gaining public and private coverage, largely in hypothesized directions. The exception is that marital dissolution and job loss are associated with an increased probability of a child losing public insurance, despite there being no clear policy explanation for such a relationship.

Intrayear Household Income Dynamics and Adolescent School Behavior

Economic life for most American households is quite dynamic. Such income instability is an understudied aspect of households’ economic contexts that may have distinct consequences for children. We examine the empirical relationship between household income instability, as measured by intrayear income change, and adolescent school behavior outcomes using a nationally representative sample of households with adolescents from the Survey of Income and Program Participation 2004 panel. We find an unfavorable relationship between income instability and adolescent school behaviors after controlling for income level and a large set of child and family characteristics. Income instability is associated with a lower likelihood of adolescents being highly engaged in school across the income spectrum and predicts adolescent expulsions and suspensions, particularly among low-income, older, and racial minority adolescents.

Welfare as Maternity Leave? Exemptions from Welfare Work Requirements and Maternal Employment.

In some states, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program offers the equivalent of paid maternity leave without job protection to low-income, single mothers of infants. Age-of-youngest-child (AYC) exemptions waive work requirements for TANF recipients after the birth of a child, generally for 3–12 months, depending on the state. This study uses data from the Current Population Survey (1998–2008) to examine whether the availability and length of AYC exemptions are predictive of rates of employment, work, and full-time work among low-educated single mothers with infants. The analysis uses the difference-in-differences (DD) technique, a comparison of outcomes under different policy treatments and between treatment and comparison groups. The results suggest that AYC exemptions are not related to employment or work rates but that living in a state with no AYC exemption is strongly and positively associated with rates of full-time work among low-educated mothers with infants.

Welfare Policies and Very Young Children: Experimental Data on Stage–Environment Fit

The authors examined the effects of welfare programs that increased maternal employment and family income on the development of very young children using data from 5 random-assignment experiments. The children were 6 months to 3 years old when their mothers entered the programs; cognitive and behavioral outcomes were measured 2-5 years later. While there were no overall program impacts, positive or negative, on the development of children in this age group, there was a pair of domain- and age-specific effects: The programs decreased positive social behavior among 1-year-olds and increased school achievement among 2-year-olds. After exploring several explanations for these results, the authors suggest that the contextual changes engendered by the programs, including childrens exposure to center-based child care, interacted differentially with specific developmental transitions.

Ratio-of-Mediator-Probability Weighting for Causal Mediation Analysis in the Presence of Treatment-by-Mediator Interaction.

Conventional methods for mediation analysis generate biased results when the mediator–outcome relationship depends on the treatment condition. This article shows how the ratio-of-mediator-probability weighting (RMPW) method can be used to decompose total effects into natural direct and indirect effects in the presence of treatment-by-mediator interactions. The indirect effect can be further decomposed into a pure indirect effect and a natural treatment-by-mediator interaction effect. Similar to other techniques for causal mediation analysis, RMPW generates causally valid results when the sequential ignorability assumptions hold. Yet unlike the model-based alternatives, including path analysis, structural equation modeling, and their latest extensions, RMPW requires relatively few assumptions about the distribution of the outcome, the distribution of the mediator, and the functional form of the outcome model. Correct specification of the propensity score models for the mediator remains crucial when parametric RMPW is applied. This article gives an intuitive explanation of the RMPW rationale, a mathematical proof, and simulation results for the parametric and nonparametric RMPW procedures. We apply the technique to identifying whether employment mediated the relationship between an experimental welfare-to-work program and maternal depression. A detailed delineation of the analytic procedures is accompanied by online Stata code as well as a stand-alone RMPW software program to facilitate users’ analytic decision making.

An Introduction to Household Economic Instability and Social Policy

This special issue of Social Service Review presents original research on the determinants and consequences of economic instability, with a focus on the interplay between instability and social policy. To frame that discussion, we define economic instability as repeated changes in employment, income, or financial well-being over time, particularly changes that are not intentional, predictable, or part of upward mobility. We also present a conceptual framework for how instability occurs in multiple domains of family life and how social policy has the potential to both buffer and exacerbate instability in employment and family structure. The articles in the volume engage many of these domains, including employment and program instability, and multiple areas of social policy, including workplace regulations and child-care subsidies. They also point to paths for future research, which we summarize in the final section of this introduction.

Child-Care Instability and Behavior Problems: Does Parenting Stress Mediate the Relationship?

Child care instability is associated with more behavior problems in young children, but the mechanisms of this relationship are not well understood. Theoretically, this relationship is likely to emerge, at least in part, because care instability leads to increased parenting stress. Moreover, low socioeconomic status and single-mother families may be more vulnerable to the effects of instability. This study tested these hypotheses using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study (n=1,675) and structural equation modeling. Three types of child care instability were examined: long-term instability, multiplicity, and needing to use back-up arrangements. Overall, findings showed little evidence that parenting stress mediated the associations between care instability and child behavior problems among the full sample. Among single-mother and low-income families, however, needing to use back-up arrangements had small positive associations with parenting stress, which partially mediated the relationship between that type of care instability and child externalizing behavior problems.

Trends and Divergences in Childhood Income Dynamics, 1970–2010

Earnings and income variability have increased since the 1970s, particularly at the bottom of the income distribution. Considerable evidence suggests that childhood income levels-captured as average or point-in-time yearly income-are associated with numerous child and adult outcomes. The importance to child development of stable proximal processes during childhood suggests that income variability may also be important, particularly if it is unpredictable, unintentional, or does not reflect an upward trend in family income. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study documents trends since the 1970s in three dimensions of childhood income dynamics: level, variability, and growth (n=7991). The analysis reveals that income variability during childhood has grown over time, while income growth rates have not. In addition, the economic context of childhood has diverged substantially by socioeconomic status, race, and family structure, with the most disadvantaged children facing a double-whammy of low income and high variability.