Martha S. Hill

The panel study of income dynamics : a user's guide

Introduction Study Design Field Procedures Data Preparation Data Quality Content Data Files Data Analysis Getting Started

Parental Family Income and the Socioeconomic Attainment of Children

Abstract Like others before us using different data, we find significant effects of parental family income on the completed schooling and wage rates of adult children using intergenerational data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We explore various hypotheses regarding these effects, finding substantial support for the economic hypothesis that income, regardless of its source, is invested by parents in their children; mixed support for the hypothesis that fathers serve as role models for their sons; and no support for the welfare dependency hypothesis. Rather than serving as positive role models, working mothers appear to have significantly less successful sons.

The Wage Effects of Marital Status and Children

Using data from the ninth wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, changes in the wage effects of marital status and number-of-children for workers of the same race and sex are analyzed as more refined measures of work experience, training, and labor force attachment are substituted for conventional measures of these factors. The results indicate that number-of-children is a good proxy variable for differential work history and labor market attachment among white women, and that marital status is not a proxy for such differences among any of the four major race/sex subgroups of workers, including white women. Overall, the findings suggest that, controlling for numerous aspects of worker qualifications, workers with greater financial responsibilities to their families receive higher wages.

Family Structure and Transfer Measures in the Health and Retirement Study: Background and Overview

This paper describes the rationale for and the measures offamily structure and inter-vivos giving in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Of particular interest to the HRS is the extent to which transfers affect the labor supply of donors, especially women. Because all children and parents are individually profiled, HRS data can be used to examine the joint allocation of space, time, and money among competing kin. Data on siblings of respondents with living parents provide further opportunities to consider how adult children distribute the burden of parent care among themselves. Using the baseline HRS, we describe the quality of data on kin attributes and the correlations among family structures, transfers, and work.

Effects of Childhood Poverty on Productivity Later in Life: Implications for Public Policy.

Abstract This paper presents a conceptual model for better understanding how poverty jeopardizes a host of childhood and adulthood abilities. An explicit link is made between this conceptual model and various policy initiatives which attempt to curb poverty or its detrimental effects. To better flesh out the model—and illustrate the myriad ways poverty exerts its effects on childrens lives—this paper reviews related social science research. This review reveals that low family income compromises childrens physical growth, cognitive development and socio-emotional functioning. It decreases the achievement of children when they are in school and puts them at heightened risk of dropping out of school early. Studies also reveal that low childhood income impairs productivity later in life. While productivity is partly compromised through limited educational attainment, there are other important causal pathways not adequately explored in existing social science research.

The Dynamics of Child Poverty in Industrialised Countries: Poverty among British children: chronic or transitory?

We investigate the nature of child poverty in Britain, adding a longitudinal perspective to cross-sectional pictures such as provided by previous research. Using panel data from the British Household Panel Survey, we analyse poverty over a six year interval (1991-6). We provide information about how many times over this period each child or adult in our sample was poor. In addition, and the principal focus of our research, we provide information about the extent of chronic and transitory poverty. For this analysis, we use information about current incomes and smoothed income (the six-year average of each individual’s current income) relative to the poverty line. Whichever longitudinal poverty concept we use, we find that children, especially very young children, have high poverty risks compared to other groups in the population. Since people’s incomes typically vary from one year to the next, the observed (current income) poverty status for many people may not match with their chronic poverty status. Consequently policies aiming to reduce chronic poverty using means-tested benefits will be compromised if benefits are targeted using information about current incomes, as we demonstrate with a numerical illustration.

The Role of Economic Resources and Remarriage in Financial Assistance for Children of Divorce

Rarely can we view marital disruption and remarriage from the perspective of both exspouses despite the need to do so for understanding processes that leave many children without adequate support. Here, pairs of ex-spouses are tracked over time to observe the flow of resources from an absent father to his former family, how it shifts as the marital, economic, and geographic circumstances of the two ex-spouses change, and the extent to which it could be increased. This longitudinal view of the determinants of the flow is supplemented with a cross-sectional one. Although data limitations preclude definitive conclusions, the analysis suggests that remarriage by the custodial mother prompts sizable reductions in child support but remarriage by the absent father has no appreciable effect. Child support increases modestly with the absent fathers income, but absent fathers tend to pay considerably less than maximal equitable levels of child support.

The Economic Fortunes of Women and Children: Lessons from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics

Most of our knowledge about the economic fortunes of women and children comes from case studies, special-purpose surveys such as National Longitudinal Surveys, or cross-sectional data. Each source has certain limitations. Case studies often provide richly detailed pictures of a few individuals who may not, however, be representative of larger groups. Analyses of special-purpose longitudinal surveys may yield generalizations about only limited segments of the population. Cross-sectional data provide snapshot pictures of an entire population but tell us little about the dynamic processes that affect their lives. Because most social science theories of human behavior are dynamic rather than static, they must be tested through repeated observations of the same people. An extra year of data on one set of individuals is considerably more valuable than new data on a different cross section. This is particularly important when the process under analysis takes an extended period of time. For instance, investigations of the causes, extent, and consequences of long-run welfare dependency must be conducted over an extended period and even across generations if competing theories are to be tested adequately. This requirement also holds for studies of changes in family composition (e.g., marriage, childbirth, marital breakups), which should be based on comparisons of a familys situation before and after change. Equally important, any study of the economic well-being of women

Unemployment and Poverty

This article looks at the relationship between unemployment and poverty for the period 1967-75. Looking at individuals in households, we find that the number of persons living in poverty would have been reduced by about 10 percent if all unemployment of household heads had been eliminated. Focusing on male household heads, we find that among prime-age men, the working poor were almost twice as likely as other workers to become unemployed and, when unemployed, the poor lost twice as large a fraction of their expected ten-year work time and labor income.

The Changing Nature of Poverty

Since the beginning of the War on Poverty, the poverty rate has fluctuated widely, and at the same time the poverty population has undergone many changes, some mirroring the changing stereotypes of the poor and others less pronounced than the changing stereotypes would lead us to believe. A feminization of poverty has occurred, with many more of the poor now in households headed by women. Interestingly, aging of the poverty population has not occurred despite growth in the elderly segment of the overall population. Concerning turnover in the poverty population, we find that despite poverty theories emphasizing persistence, recurrent poverty is relatively rare and poverty is not generally passed from one generation to the next. Poverty prevention has come from both economic growth and government transfers; however, inequality in economic growth has contributed to poverty. With the proportion of elderly and female-headed households likely to continue at a high level into the future, poverty rates are also likely to remain high unless government transfers are increased.