Title: 52006200 Families and Social Policy Lecture 23 111705 Children and Policy
15200/6200Families and Social PolicyLecture
2311/17/05Children and Policy
2Agenda
-
- VOTE!!!!
- Book report Jarred B.
- Thursday big turn back day of book reports
- POLICY AND CHILDREN
- Income support and children
- Role of tanf
- Perceptions
- What we know from research about the effects on
children - What money cant buy
- Thursday
- Compare and contrast duncan and magnuson chapter
with armour chapter from OPK
3Developmental Issues
- 1) how do children develop?
- Continuity timing of events
- 2) How does the family functioning matter?
- Role of parenting is key
- poverty affects from left to right
- marital rship and mental health
- 3) how does individual differences matter?
- Resilience
- 3 protective factors individ char close
relationship in family social support outside - 4)How does answering these questions apply to
social policy and children ? - What ages poverty short versus long term
- Perceptions of financial strain fostering
rships
4What does the research say?
5Question
- Do work-promoting welfare policies help or hurt
poor childrens school achievement? - Study Duncan and colleagues, 2001
- Method
- Pool data on 30,000 children whose families were
enrolled in 7 random-assignment experiments
6Welfare Reform and Child Well-Being
Changes in Child Resources and Context
Parenting gatekeeping Cognitive stimulation
inside and outside the home Maternal mental
health
Welfare Reform Provisions Work mandates and
incentives Sanctions Time limits
Changes in Adult Behavior Employment Welfare
Receipt Total Family Income
Changes in Child Well-being
7Turn to experiments of 1990s
- Various treatments
- Mandated Employment Services
- Work or Education
- Generous Earnings supplements
- Time limits
- Random Assignment
- Follow-up after 2-3 and, in some cases, 5 years
8In contrast with recent work with these data,
this research
- Pool microdata
- Allows testing effects for smaller groups of
children - Add more studies and longer-run follow-ups from
existing studies - To understand generalizability of effects
9Children benefit from an earnings supplement
program in both the short and long term.
10A program with an earning supplement alone had
more pervasive benefits to children than one that
combined an earning supplement with a time limit.
- Earning supplement and no time limit (mfip)
- Positive effects on parental employment
- Positive effects on child test scores and
behavior - Earning supplement and time limit (ct job first)
- Positive effect on employment and child behavior
11Welfare and work policies for parents have small,
negative effects on some aspects of adolescent
schooling.
12Summary
- http//www.mdrc.org/video_archive.html
- Welfare reforms targeted to parents CAN affect
their children - Program design matters
- Policies that increase income bring benefits to
younger children - Child age matters
- Welfare reform policies that increase employment
can benefit younger children - Transitions in and out of middle childhood
sensitive periods
13Gayle and her daughter
- Gayle, a single mother of one adolescent-aged
daughter, Susan, noted that Susan was having
several problems in school. Skipping school had
become a big problem. Normally getting Cs or
better, Susan was now getting Ds and Fs. Gayle
knew her daughter was skipping school, and she
was sure it had been going on frequently.
However, partly because Gayle had been working
she didnt know exactly how much school Susan had
missed. Gayle was afraid to confront her
daughter about it or ask the school because its
all gonna come down on me and Im not ready to
deal with it. I dont think I should be punished
for that. Gayle was further frustrated because
she knows Susan would be going to school every
day if she was home. In this situation, Gayle
feels trapped between caring for her daughter and
working.
14Tina and her daughter
- Tina is a single mother. Her adolescent daughter
Tamara takes her younger sister to day care in
the morning - Cause shes late every day for her school, every
day. And what the school says to me is they
gotta do what they do, whats their policy.
Shes gotta stay after school, do her detention
or shell lose her credit out of that morning
class cause she didnt get there on time. So, she
feels sad and I feel bad because I gotta be at
work at 7. She cant be at school by 7, she
cant. We all cant be at the same place at the
same time..
15What can money buy or not buy?
- Mayer 1997
- Mayers storyline
- Would giving more income to poor families
significantly affect how well children within
those families do in life? - imagine doubling the income of families earning
the lowest 20 without taking anything away from
others. - What would the effects be on how well children
from those families did?
16Mayers Research
- Studied
- academic test scores,
- years of schooling completed,
- behavior problems (including trouble w/ law),
- Preg maternity rates for unwed teenage girls,
- whether young adult men who are not students have
jobs, and young mens wages.
17Mayers methods
- measures of income after the occurrence of an
outcome are added to statistical models of the
effects of income and other characteristics on a
child outcome. - Accounting for omitted variablessiblings
18Mayers Findings
- additional parental income makes a difference,
- but that the difference becomes much smaller when
other differences between families are taken into
account and that it shrinks further as family
income rises. - If earnings and government benefitssuch as food
stamps, housing subsidies, other income
transfers, Medicaid-supported health care, and
the earned income tax creditprovide the
necessities, then additional cash income may not
importantly change how children fare.
19Mayers Findings continued
- "The things that parents buy as their income goes
up have a relatively small effect on childrens
well-being," - Big effect factors are parental intelligence,
skills and talents, and personal characteristics - Once basic needs met, all about parents
20Implications.
- Should we spend on children or their parents?