Maternal employment and the health of low-income young children

Abstract

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. Mother's report of child health status is predicted as a function of exogenous variation in maternal employment associated with random assignment to the program group. IV estimates show a modest adverse effect of maternal employment on children's 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.

Factors Influencing Routine Vaccination of Children of Mothers Live-Stock Retailers in the Markets of Yaoundé

“…We estimated that because of their workload, they often abandoned their children at home for the market. Studies have shown harmful effects of the jobs of mothers on the health of children [10]. We would have thought that live-stock retailers are of the poor social class and therefore less likely to request preventive care.…”

“…Working mothers often abandoned their children at home because of theirs occupations. Authors demonstrated that the jobs of mothers had a harmful effect on the health of children [10]. Mothers of live-stock retail are among those of the less favourable socioeconomic class with high workload that can reduce the time allocated to the preventive actions for their children.…”

From statistical associations to causation: What developmentalists can learn from instrumental variables techniques coupled with experimental data.

“…It is also possible to pool or combine data from multiple interventions, if they had similar enough samples and intervention targets, and use the multiple treatment indicators as instruments to estimate multiple pathways (see, for example, Crosby et al, 2006;Gennetian et al, 2006;Morris et al, 2006). Interestingly, research by Beauchaine, Webster-Stratton, and Reid (2005) combined data across six randomized clinical trials to estimate mediational models of the effects of parenting on child conduct disorders.…”

Parental job loss and children's health: Ten years after the massive layoff of the SOEs' workers in China

“…As a key indicator of family economic security, parental employment affects substantially the family time and income resources invested in child health (Gennetian et al, 2010). However, the theory of parental employment and children's health is ambiguous.…”