Leonard M. Lopoo

Has the Intergenerational Transmission of Economic Status Changed

Only a few studies have tried to estimate the trend in the elasticity of children’s economic status with respect to parents’ economic status, and these studies produce conflicting results. In an attempt to reconcile these findings, we use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the trend in the elasticity of son’s income with respect to parental income. Our evidence suggests a nonlinear trend in which the elasticity increased for sons born between 1949 and 1953, and then declined for sons born after that. Thus depending on the time periods one compares, the trend could be upward, downward, or flat. This and other factors help explain the different estimates for the trend in mobility.

The Changing Effect of Family Background on the Incomes of American Adults

We analyze changes in the determinants of family income between 1961 and 1999, focusing on the effect of parental education, occupational rank, income, marital status, family size, region of residence, race, and ethnicity. Our data, which cover respondents between the ages of thirty and fifty-nine, come from two Occupational Changes in a Generation surveys, the General Social Survey, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The multiple correlation between respondents’ family income and their parents’ characteristics fell between 1961 to 1999. During the 1960s the overall dispersion of respondents’ family incomes also fell, so the income gap between respondents from advantaged and disadvantaged families narrowed dramatically. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s the overall dispersion of respondents’ family income rose again. But because the correlation between respondents’ family income and their parents’ characteristics was still falling, the income gap between respondents from advantaged and disadvantaged families showed no consistent trend. All else equal, the economic cost of being Black, Hispanic, or born in the South fell between 1961 and 1999. The cost of having a parent who worked in an unskilled rather than a skilled occupation fell between 1961 and 1972 but not after that. Indeed, occupational inequality among parents has probably become more important since 1972. Neither the effect of parental education nor the effect of parental income changed significantly during the years for which we have data. Daughters were considerably less mobile than sons in the 1970s, but this difference diminished in the 1980s and 1990s. Respondents with parents in the bottom quarter of the socioeconomic distribution were more likely to remain in their quartile of origin than respondents with parents in the top quarter of the distribution. We conclude by arguing that while both justice and economic efficiency require a significant amount of exchange mobility, neither justice nor efficiency implies that the correlation between family income and parental advantages ought to be zero. The case for programs that seek to reduce intergenerational inheritance depends on whether they reduce poverty and inequality.

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.

Maternal Work Hours and Adolescents’ School Outcomes Among Low-Income Families in Four Urban Counties

We examine how changes in maternal work hours affect adolescent children’s school participation and performance outcomes using data from interviews in 1998 and 2001 with approximately 1,700 women who, in May 1995, were welfare-reliant, single mothers of adolescents living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty in Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, and Philadelphia counties. Analyses control for a broad array of mothers’ characteristics, including their psychological and physical health, experiences with domestic violence and substance abuse, as well as unobserved time-invariant characteristics. In fixed-effects models, we find unfavorable effects of increased maternal work hours on three of six outcomes: skipping school, performing above average, and parental contact about behavior problems. Adolescent-aged sons seem to be particularly sensitive to changes in mothers’ hours of work.

Family structure and the economic wellbeing of children in youth and adulthood

An extensive literature on the relationship between family structure and childrens outcomes consistently shows that living with a single parent is associated with negative outcomes. Few US studies, however, examine how a childs family structure affects outcomes for the child once he/she reaches adulthood. We directly examine, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, whether family structure during childhood is related to the childs economic wellbeing both during childhood as well as during adulthood. We find that living with a single parent is associated with the level of family resources available during childhood. This finding persists even when we remove time invariant factors within families. We also show that family structure is related to the childs education, marital status, and adult family income. Once we control for the childs demography and economic wellbeing in childhood, however, the associations into adulthood become trivial in size and statistically insignificant, suggesting that the relationship between family structure and childrens long-term, economic outcomes is due in large part to the relationship between family structure and economic wellbeing in childhood.

Maternal Employment and Latchkey Adolescents

Social scientists who have estimated the relationship between a mother’s work hours and the probability that her children care for themselves are often limited by cross‐sectional data and use of a small number of control variables. This study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a fixed effects logit model to ask if maternal work hours are related to the probability that adolescents spend some time at home alone after school. Results demonstrate that the relationship exists and is nonlinear: only the adolescents of mothers who work more than 30 hours per week are more likely to spend time after school with no adult present, compared with the adolescent children of mothers who are not working. This finding suggests that if social welfare policies encourage low‐income mothers to work full‐time, these policies may increase the probability that their adolescent children spend some time at home alone after school.

U.S. Social Policy and Family Complexity

The United States has a number of social policies that were designed explicitly to provide options and supports for individuals related to their family formation decisions, such as the Title X National Family Planning Program and the Healthy Marriage Initiative. At the same time, because social policies can have considerable implications for the populations they target, we have long known that government policy can impact family structure and individuals’ fertility decisions even when such an impact was not the policy’s stated objective. This article reviews both theoretical and empirical literature asking to what extent United States’ social policy affects the complexity of families. Specifically, we review the literature on divorce and custody laws, means-tested transfer programs, and policies designed to provide information and services related to family formation. We report findings, and discuss common themes across the literature and identify important gaps in knowledge.

Marriageability among the Partners of Young Mothers

Much research explores the nature and consequences of childbearing by unmarried young women, but few works investigate the characteristics of the men who father children with these women. This study uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to describe the economic, social, and behavioral capacities of men who have children with unwed young mothers (ages 18–21). It compares these men to others who have children with women who are older than 21, as well as with those who are married. Findings suggest that the partners of single young mothers are more likely than the partners of other women with children to have been incarcerated, to abuse their partners physically, and to have substance abuse problems. They are less likely to work or attend school than are other fathers. Difference‐in‐differences techniques consider the potential beneficial effects of marriage but locate few clear benefits.

Household Crowding During Childhood and Long-Term Education Outcomes.

Household crowding, or having more household members than rooms in one’s residence, could potentially affect a child’s educational attainment directly through a number of mechanisms. We use U.S. longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to derive new measures of childhood crowding and estimate negative associations between crowding during one’s high school years and, respectively, high school graduation by age 19 and maximum education at age 25. These negative relationships persist in multivariate models in which we control for the influence of a variety of factors, including socioeconomic status and housing-cost burden. Given the importance of educational attainment for a range of midlife and later-life outcomes, this study suggests that household crowding during one’s high school years is an engine of cumulative inequality over the life course.

Labor and Delivery Complications among Teenage Mothers

A broad set of academic literatures shows that childbearing is associated with a variety of negative health outcomes for teenage mothers. Many researchers question whether teenage childbearing is the causal explanation for the negative outcomes (i.e., whether there is a biological effect of teenage childbearing or whether the relationship is due to other factors correlated with health and teenage childbearing). This study investigates the relationship between teenage childbearing and labor and delivery complications using a panel of confidential birth certificate data over the period from 1994 to 2003 from the state of Texas. Findings show that compared to mothers aged 25 to 29 having their first child, teenager mothers appear to have superior health in most—but not all—labor and delivery outcomes.