52006200 Families and Social Policy Lecture 23 111705 Children and Policy

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5200/6200Families and Social PolicyLecture
2311/17/05Children and Policy
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Agenda

• 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

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Developmental 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

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What does the research say?
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Question

• 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

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Welfare 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
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Turn 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

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In 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

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Children benefit from an earnings supplement
program in both the short  and long term.
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A 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

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Welfare and work policies for parents have small,
negative effects on some aspects of adolescent
schooling.
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Summary

• 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

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Gayle 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.

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Tina 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..

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What 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?

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Mayers 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.

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Mayers 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

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Mayers 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.

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Mayers 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

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Implications.

• Should we spend on children or their parents?