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Bringing together papers presented at the Conference on Father Involvement, this volume includes contributions by leading scholars in anthropology, demography, economics, family science, psychology, and sociology. Many of the contributors also address the implications of father involvement for family policy issues, including family leave, child care, and child support. Furthermore, the discussion of fatherhood ranges well beyond the case of intact, middle-class, white families to include fathers from various ethnic groups and socioeconomic classes and of varied marital status, including fathers of nonmarital children, single-father families, and nonresident fathers. Co-published simultaneously as Marriage & Family Review 29,2/3 & 4 (2000). Contents: I. The History of Fatherhood Research and Perspectives on Father Involvement. II. Fathers in Intact Families. III. Single Fathers and Fathers with Nonmarital Children. IV. Marital Disruption and Parent-Child Relationships: Interventions and Policies on Fatherhood. V. General Editors' Epilogue: The Diversity of Fatherhood: Change, Constancy, and Contradiction. REVIEW: How much power does a father have to influence his children's development? A lively and often heated public debate on the role and value of the father in a family has been underway in the US for the past decade. Nevertheless, we are far from understanding the complex ways in which fathers make contributions to their families and children. This book addresses the central questions of the role of fathers: What is the impact of father involvement on child outcomes? What factors predict increased involvement of fathers? It addresses both practical and theoretical concerns including the redefinition of fatherhood, changes over time in research on fatherhood, the predictive power of fathers' activities on their children's adult outcomes, the correlation between fathers' income and their involvement with their nonmarital children, the influence of fathers o n their sons' probability of growing up to become responsible fathers, the effects of divorce on father-son and father-daughter relationshps, and interventions that help to keep divorced fathers in touch with their children. This comprehensive, powerful book combines pioneering empirical research with thoughtful considerations of the social and psychological implications of fatherhood. It is essential reading for researchers, policymakers, psychologists, and students of family studies, human development, gender studies, social policy, sociology and human ecology

"We now have evidence that money from child support may have a direct positive effect on children's cognitive development and educational attainment," said Elizabeth Peters, Cornell professor of consumer economics and housing.

How far children go in school also is influenced by other factors, such as family income, education of parents, family structure and composition and residential location, according to an earlier study by Peters.

"Some of these findings have important implications for policy," said Peters, an expert on the economic dimensions of marriage, divorce, child custody and child support who makes a concerted effort to bridge the gap between research and family policy. "Since we now know, for example, that fathers' child support payments have benefits beyond their economic value, we should consider this when developing policy." Cornell University, RELEASE: Jan. 24, 1997.

Table of Contents
Urban labor markets and economic opportunity / George E. Peterson, Wayne Vroman -- Changing skills in the U.S. workforce : trends of supply and demand / Arnold H. Packer, John G. Wirt -- Comment : skill requirements and the work force / Lawrence Mishel -- Comment : restructuring work and learning / Richard J. Murnane -- Mismatches and the urban labor market / Harry J. Holzer, Wayne Vroman -- Structural changes in the U.S. economy and black male joblessness : a reassessment / James H. Johnson, Jr., Melvin L. Oliver -- Comment : structural change and black unemployment / Keith R. Ihlanfeldt -- Comment : demand-side and supply-side explanations of black male joblessness / Roberto M. Fernandez -- Urban schooling and the perpetuation of job inequality in metropolitan Chicago / Gary Orfield -- Crime and the employment of disadvantaged youths / Richard B. Freeman -- Facilitating upward mobility through small business ownership / Timothy Bates, Constance R. Dunham -- Immigrants, cities, and equal opportunity / Michael J. White -- Comment : social structure and business development / Richard Waldinger.

The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) was used to estimate the proportion of inmates who go on [to] graduate from high school or attend college in each subsequent age interval.

The findings in this report should give policy makers reason to reflect. The price of prisons in state and federal budgets represents just a fraction of the overall cost of incarcerating such a large segment of our society. The collateral consequences are tremendous and far-reaching, and as this report illuminates with fresh data and analysis, they include substantial and lifelong damage to the ability of former inmates, their families and their children to earn a living wage, move up the income ladder and pursue the American Dream.

This dissertation investigates how and why inequalities in wealth translate into inequalities in opportunities for the next generation. Using nationally representative longitudinal data from the United States and Germany, I provide a detailed description and explanation of intergenerational wealth effects across two very different institutional contexts. In both countries, I find a strong relationship between parental wealth and children's attainment outcomes. In the United States, parents' net worth, financial wealth, and home wealth exert positive effects on the opportunities of children, both across the entire educational career and beyond that for early occupational attainment. In Germany, wealth inequalities in opportunities occur chiefly in the attainment of the selective secondary school degree that confers access to a college career.

I draw on an econometric modeling approach, labeled future treatment strategy, to increase the confidence in the causal relationship between wealth and educational outcomes. This is the foundation for the direct empirical assessment of the causal mechanisms underlying the observed wealth effects. I show that, in the United States, some but not a large part of the link between wealth and educational outcomes accrues from the advantageous neighborhood conditions to which wealthy families have access. I also propose and add empirical support to another mechanism, namely the insurance or safety net function of wealth, according to which parental wealth reduces the potential consequences of failure in the attainment process and thereby changes some fundamental parameters of the educational decision-making process.

The insurance function of wealth also helps explain the finding of substantial wealth effects in both institutional contexts. It appears that it would require a much more extensive system of "social wealth" than that found in either the United States or Germany to reduce the importance of private wealth as a safety net for children. A range of promising policy alternatives that directly target the distribution of wealth is shown to be also largely absent in both nations.

In the second essay, I estimate the degree of heterogeneity in the outcomes of displaced workers and analyze the extent to which these heterogeneous experiences can be explained by observable (or "systematic") factors as opposed to unobserved (or "idiosyncratic") factors. To this end, I use data on displaced workers to estimate the standard deviation of earnings losses following displacement. I find statistically significant heterogeneity at the lower bound, which is equal to about half of the mean effect each year following displacement. Once I control for systematic differences in observable characteristics, the remaining idiosyncratic variation is estimated to be about 20%-40% less than the total variation in the first few years following displacement and 50%-80% less than the total variation six to eight years after displacement. Systematic variation, however, remains fairly large and constant over time. These results suggest that idiosyncratic factors, such as luck or unobserved quality, have largely transitory effects on the outcomes of displaced workers while systematic factors, such as industrial mobility and unemployment duration, disproportionately explain the persistent heterogeneity in the costs of worker displacement.

The third essay explores the potential causes of spillovers in the wage distribution that occur when the minimum wage increases. This empirical phenomenon, known as the "ripple effect" of minimum wage laws, is typically explained in terms of demand substitution: where the rising minimum increases the demand for more-skilled workers who become relatively inexpensive compared to less-skilled workers. I show that workers will also respond to changes in the minimum wage by re-optimizing their labor supply since an increase in the minimum wage leads to lower compensating wage differentials. The resulting decline in labor supply at hedonically less desirable (and hence, higher paying) jobs could also cause the ripple effect. I combine labor market data on individuals with occupation-level hedonic data and provide evidence that the ripple effect is largely caused by labor supply substitution and not labor demand substitution as previously believed.

Objective: To examine the relationship between mothers' depressive symptoms and medically attended injuries in their children and the potential mediating role of child behavior.

Design/Methods: A cohort of mother–child dyads from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth followed from 1992 to1994. The primary exposure variable was maternal depressive symptoms as measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale in 1992. Child behavior was assessed by the Behavior Problems Index externalizing subscale. Logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between depressive symptoms, child behavior, and injury reported in the prior year in 1994.

Results: 94 medically attended injuries were reported in the 1106 children (8.5%); two-thirds were sustained in the home environment. Maternal depressive symptoms significantly increased the risk of child injury; injury risk increased 4% for every 1-point increase in depressive symptoms (adjusted OR 1.04, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.08, p = 0.02). Increasing maternal depressive symptoms also increased the risk of externalizing behavior problems (adjusted OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.09), but externalizing behavior problems did not significantly mediate the relationship between maternal symptoms and child injury.

Conclusions: Increasing depressive symptoms in mothers was associated with an increased risk of child injury. Child behavior did not significantly mediate the association between maternal depressive symptoms and child injury in this cohort. Greater recognition, referral, and treatment of depressive symptoms in mothers may have effects on child behavior and injury risk.

Looking at Lives includes studies from a range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, and education, which together cover a span of more than fifty years. The contributors pay particular attention to the changing historical, cultural, and scientific context of their work, as well as the theoretical and methodological changes that have occurred in their fields over decades. What emerges is a clear indication of the often unexpected effects these studies have had on public policies and public opinion - especially as they relate to such issues as the connection between poverty and criminal behavior, or the consequences of teen-age pregnancy and drug use for inner-city youth. For example, David Weikart reveals how his long-term research on preschool intervention projects, begun in 1959, permitted him to show how surprisingly effective preschool education can be in improving the lives of disadvantaged children. In another study, John Laub and Robert Sampson build on findings from a groundbreaking study begun by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck in the 1950s to reveal the myriad ways in which juvenile delinquency can predict criminal behavior in adults. And Arland Thornton, Ronald Freedman, and William Axinn employ an intergenerational study of women and their children begun in 1962 to examine the substantial relaxation of social mores for family and individual behavior in the latter decades of the 20th century.

Looking at Lives is full of striking testimony to the importance of long-term, longitudinal studies. As a unique chronicle of the origins and development of longitudinal studies in America, this collection will be an invaluable aid to 21st century investigators who seek to build on the successes and the experiences of the pioneers in life-course studies. Copyright Russell Sage Foundation, 2002.

We want to assess, first, the extent of correlation across various aspects of the social exclusion of a child. How strong are the correlations? How many children experience exclusion in multiple dimensions? How does this compare across Canada and the US? We are also particularly interested in the link between parental social exclusion and childhood social exclusion. That is, if the parent is socially excluded, is her child likely also to be excluded? To examine such associations, we estimate tobit models of the number of exclusions experienced by the child as functions of measures of various measures of adult exclusion, controlling for other relevant sociodemographic characteristics. The final section of the paper offers some conclusions as well as suggestions for further research.

"An educational study unprecedented in scope finds that children who enter kindergarten with elementary mathematics and reading skills are the most likely to experience later academic success -- whether or not they have social or emotional problems."

This issue of the Monthly Labor Review celebrates the 25th anniversary of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort (NLSY79). The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) program, of which the NLSY79 is the flagship survey, is a bit of an anomaly among the Bureau of Labor Statistics many data collection efforts. None of the Bureau's key economic indicators relies on NLS data. Only a couple of the more than one hundred press releases the Bureau publishes each year involve data collected by the NLS program. It is doubtful that financial markets ever will react strongly to the release of NLS data. And unlike the current employment statistics, the inflation statistics, or the unemployment rate, measures from the NLSY79 are not likely to be discussed in everyday conversation or even in the business news.

Yet, the NLSY79 has been extremely influential. Over the last 25 years, it has provided the data for thousands of Ph.D. dissertations, working papers, journal articles, and books that have shaped theory and knowledge in disciplines such as economics, sociology, education, psychology, and health sciences. The survey's primary constituency includes hundreds of researchers within universities, think tanks, and government agencies both in the United States and abroad. Because of its quality, breadth, and thoroughness, the NLSY79 has become probably the most analyzed longitudinal data set in the social sciences. Almost every issue of leading labor economics and demography journals contain at least one article that uses NLSY79 data.

Institute for Research on Poverty Conference report. Enormous attention has been paid to adolescent mothers and their children. The United States has a higher rate of teen pregnancy than any other industrialized country. In 1988 alone, there were 488,941 births to women under the age of 20. If there were no adverse effects of adolescent parenting, the high incidence of teenage childbearing in the U.S. would not surface as a policy issue. Because of the high personal and social costs of teen parenting, the antecedents, consequences, and factors associated with adolescent motherhood have been widely researched. In contrast, young fathers are infrequently the focus of researchers. Knowledge of this population contains neither the breath nor depth of knowledge concerning young mothers. Currently, there are only six published studies of young fathers which use nationally representative data. Of the six, one focuses on absent fathers many of whom are in their early to mid twenties. The remaining five use outdated data, are narrowly focused, or use biased subsamples of nationally representative data. Consequently, public policies directed towards this population are made in a virtual vacuum of knowledge. However, few public policies are specifically targeted at teen fathers. To partially fill the void of knowledge concerning teen fathers, this article provides a general overview of this population. The data for the ensuing analyses are derived from two different sources. The description of the teen father population is based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experiences-Youth Cohort (NLSY). NLSY is a balanced panel which includes information on 6,403 males ages 14-21 in 1979. The second source of data is a survey mailed to the directors of Child Support Enforcement (CSE) programs and State Court administrators in eve ry state and the District of Columbia in January, 1993.

Methods: We select two nationally representative birth cohorts in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 1979 and 1997 (N = 9821). We use the difference-in-difference approach to examine whether the positions of teen parents have progressed or worsened across the two cohorts.

Conclusion: The birth rates to teenage girls remained unchanged across the two cohorts, but the reported rates of teenage fatherhood increased. The proportions of both unmarried teenage fathers and mothers increased between the two cohorts. Teen fathers and mothers came increasingly from single-mother families with disadvantaged backgrounds. The proportion of teen mothers or fathers living with partners has not changed, but there has been a major shift from marriage to non-marital cohabitation. The education and earnings of the 1997 cohort of teen parents showed some progress relative to the earlier teen parent cohort, but no progress relative to peers who were not teen parents.

We empirically examine the relationship between obesity and urban development patterns where individuals reside. Previous analyses treat urban form as exogenous to weight, and find higher body mass indices (BMI) among residents of areas with sprawl patterns of development. Using samples of recent movers, we find that the causality runs in both directions. Individuals who move to denser locations lose weight. As well, BMI is a determinant of the choice of a dense or sprawling location. In sum, while moving to a dense area results in weight loss, such locations are unlikely to be selected by individuals with high BMI.

Some of the contributors examine policies designed to correct problems, while others look at the changing racial and ethnic composition in America and its implications for African-Americans, as other minorities surpass them in numbers and claim political, economic, and social attention. The late James Tobin has contributed a foreword to this important collection.

This paper shows that educational outcomes for both types of children in blended families -- stepchildren and their half-siblings who are the joint biological children of both parents -- are similar to each other and substantially worse than outcomes for children reared in traditional nuclear families. We conclude that, as a description of the data, the crucial distinction is between children reared in traditional nuclear families (i.e., families in which all children are the joint biological children of both parents) and children reared in other family structure (e.g., single-parent families or blended families).

The paper's second contribution is to clarify the question, "What is the effect of family structure on outcomes for children?" Interpreted literally, the question asks about the effect of one endogenous variable on another. We argue for reformulating the family structure question by specifying some explicit counterfactual, and express a preference for a policy-relevant counterfactual. As an example, we suggest considering the effect of reducing the "marriage penalty" in the earned-income tax credit (EITC) that makes the credit essentially unavailable to two-earner couples. The EITC marriage penalty counterfactual, like any policy-relevant counterfactual, focuses attention on outcomes for those children whose parent's behavior is affected by the incentives created by the policy change.

This paper examines this proposition using the linked 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 - data on mothers) and NLSY79 Child and Youth Supplement data. All families are followed backward in time in order to examine their characteristics before the birth of their first child (for families without a child with disabilities) or before the birth of their first child with disabilities (for families with a disabled child). We estimate the impact the birth of a child with disabilities has on the likelihood that their family will fall into poverty or use AFDC/TANF, controlling for pre- and post-birth characteristics of parents and other family members. The results of this estimation suggest that causality is mixed. Descriptive statistics show that children with disabilities are more likely to be born to families in poverty (12.1 percent are in poverty the year before the child is born versus 8.9 percent of families who never have a disabled child in the year before their oldest child is born). This suggests that an enhanced focus on prenatal care for low-income families may be appropriate. However, the birth of a disabled child also significantly increases the risk of entering poverty for families (17.9 percent have family incomes below the poverty line one year after the birth of the oldest disabled child). Families who never have a disabled child have no significant change in their risk of poverty between the year prior to their oldest child's birth and the year after the birth of that child. This indicates that enhanced support services for these families may significantly improve the welfare of not only disabled children, but their family members and the communities in which they live as well. To the extent that other social risks also follow from the increased risk of poverty in families with disabled children (such as divorce and involvement with the child welfare system), policy intervention may lead to other social improvements.

Also: Center for Social Development Working Paper No. 03-01, March 25, 2003.

Design: Conducted regression and moderation analysis using mother-child dyadic data from panel surveys, stratified by race. The simple slopes for the interactions were probed to determine the magnitude and significance of the interaction.

Setting: Secondary data analysis utilizing data from two cohorts of the National Longitudinal Surveys: 1) National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979; and 2) National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Children and Young Adults.

Participants: The sample included 6,261 children and 2,967 matched mothers.

Results: Mother's ACE score was positively associated with her child's ACE score. Economic position was a significant moderator for Black families. Higher wages and net family wealth during children's first five years were associated with weakened associations between mother and child ACEs for Black families. For Hispanic families, higher wages and salary were significantly associated with weakened associations. Among White families, higher net family wealth was associated with stronger ACEs transmission.

A more recent version of this article appears in IZA Journal of Labor Policy 2013, 2:14 at http://www.izajolp.com/content/2/1/14.

Advocates of preferences rely on two tactics to align women with their cause. The first is the tactic of fear-mongering -- its machinations are the wage gap and the glass ceiling. In 1959, activists asserted that for every dollar a man earned, a woman earned a mere 59 cents. They maintained this was eo ipso proof of gender discrimination. By 1995, that gap has narrowed, but the average American woman still only takes home about 72 cents for every dollar the average man puts in his wallet. The pay gap's legacy is the "glass ceiling," a conveniently less concrete complaint about the barriers to success facing women at the highest echelons of corporate America.

This briefing exposes the first proposition -- that wage and attainment differentials between the sexes are due to discrimination -- for the red herring it is. Analyzing census data and summarizing economic labor studies, this briefing shows that the gaps reflect not discrimination but different levels and fields of education, different career choices and marriage. When women and men with the same levels of education, field of education, and workforce experience are compared, the gap virtually disappears.

The second contention, that women owe their professional success over the last thirty years to preference programs stewarded by feminist advocates, can't be proven one way or the other. Two facts are beyond dispute. First, over the last 30 years, women increased their representation both at the upper levels of corporate America and in this country's professional schools. Second, to varying degrees over the same period, programs that accord preference to women have been in place in America's institutions. But a correlation does not prove cause.

Chronicling the proliferation of women-owned businesses and the marked increase of women enrolled in professional schools, this briefing argues that the necessary condition for much of women's success is affirmative action in its original sense -- equality of opportunity. Furthermore, there is scant reason to believe that women will not continue to succeed in an environment in which they are simply accorded the same rights and opportunities as men, without special preferences.

Note: A previous version of this abstract can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=536184

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Chapter 2 introduces the concept of mechanical ability, describes the tests used to measure it, and briefly compares this dimension with conventional measures of ability.

Chapter 3 presents a general framework to understand the effects of multiple dimensions of ability on outcomes with special emphasis in the selection into occupations and tasks where workers are more productive. This framework is used to decompose the overall effect of unobserved abilities into the components explained by schooling decision, occupational choice, and direct on-the-job productivity. I show that all three dimensions of ability have multiple, heterogeneous, and independent roles. They influence the sorting of workers into schooling and occupations, and also have a direct effect on wages. This implies that a policy that increases ability at advanced ages, when schooling and occupational decisions cannot be altered, may still have a direct impact on wages.

Chapter 4, written in collaboration with Sergio Urzúa, analyzes the implications of considering the three dimensions of ability on the decision of attending four-year college. We find that, despite the high return associated with college attendance, individuals with low levels of cognitive and socio-emotional ability but high mechanical ability could expect higher wages by choosing not to attend a four-year college. These results highlight the importance of exploring alternative pathways to successful careers for individuals with a different profile of skills.

The thrust of the study is to examine existing federal surveys in order to identify those to which work-at-home questions have been, or can be added in order to generate more reliable information about an increasingly mobile workforce. By this strategy, at little or no cost, new or revised questions can be added while maintaining the continuity of past years' data sets.

In adapting these surveys, the problem is to define "work," "home," and similar words that are commonly used in our language but which have acquired a plethora of associated meanings. The difficulty has not been resolved by the many new terms coined to describe non-traditional ways to work. The problem with words such as "telecommuting," "hoteling," "homebased business," and "mobile workers," is that they are not defined by objective criteria such as the hours worked and locations. To bypass this situation, we recommend phrasing questions in terms of measurable variables such as the place of work and the time in days and hours spent at each location. That approach leaves researchers the option of applying their own definitions that fit the context of their analyses.

About 20 questionnaires were examined to identify those to which work-at-home questions were relevant. During the period of the study, questions were added to the American Housing Survey, Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey, and to the Survey of Income and Program Participation. We propose new questions or rephrasing for the Current Population Survey, the 2000 Census, the Health and Retirement Survey, National Educational Longitudinal Study, National Household Education Survey, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Further, we recommend continuing the topic of work at home in those surveys to which questions had previously been added such as the Characteristics of Business Owners, the National Longitudinal Surveys, and the National Survey of Families and Households.

In addition, a set of core questions with four levels of priority is recommended for consideration in designing future surveys.

Copyright of Journal of Child and Adolescent Substance Abuse is the property of Haworth and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts)

The first essay uses experimental techniques to replicate the results of recent research pertaining to gender in preferences for competition in the labor market. Previous research has found a drastic difference in the choices of men and women when given the choice of compensation between the piece rate and the tournament compensation schemes. This note describes additional data collected at a Purdue University that fails to replicate these results. In particular, in the data collected at Purdue there appears to be no gender differences in the compensation choices between men and women with both men and women, slightly favoring the tournament compensation. Even after controlling for a number of factors such as performance and confidence across the original experiment and this experiment, there remains a dramatic difference in the choices of women in the data collected for the replication compared to the original study.

The second essay furthers the study of competition and gender in the laboratory by studying how gender may affect the use of competitive compensation. To do so, I develop a new laboratory methodology where one group of subjects (managers) selects a payment type for another group of subjects (workers). The results suggest that female workers are less likely to be placed into a tournament. This has direct implications for the demand of female executives where compensation is typically designed with a tournament structure. Second, I document a significant change in the propensity of women to choose the tournament compensation scheme compared to other similar experiments. This increase is consistent with the first essay of this thesis.

The third essay uses field data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort (NLSY) to analyze how promotion and wage gains attached to promotions for women vary over the life-cycle of full time workers in the United States. Few studies of promotion have focused on large panel data sets. Notable exceptions have focused on the popular data set from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort (NSLY). Data from the NSLY have been utilized in at least four studies of promotion standards, with the finding that women are held to higher promotion standards than otherwise equally qualified men. All of these studies have utilized older data from the 1984 - 1990 survey years of the NLSY. During these years the subjects in the survey were between the ages of 19-33 years old. I explore the differences in promotion with data from the most recent survey years from 1996 - 2006, where subjects are now between the ages of 31 and 46. The findings indicate that although there was strong evidence of promotion disparity in the early years of subject's working careers; these effects have lessened as they have entered the prime working years. Additionally, I explore the wage gains attached to promotions. While the data from the subject's early working career show wage gains that favor women, the more recent data shows no discernable difference in wage gains attached to promotion.

Vocational and technical training obtained outside of regular schoolwork and state level enforcement of labor safety laws are two key predictors of risk for work related injury. Neither of these factors has been thoroughly investigated to determine any effect on the outcome of work-related injury for young workers. This study addresses this gap by utilizing a population based survey, National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY79), to explore a wide range of sociodemographic attributes experienced by a cohort of working teenagers and young adults as they transitioned over a ten year period (1979 to 1989) towards being adult workers.

Multivariate analyses were done to calculate odds ratios indicating the likelihood for specific individual attributes and job characteristics to be associated with the reporting of a work related injury in 1989 by survey respondents (age 24 to 32) while controlling for relevant covariates. A separate measurement was done to correlate the state level strictness of enforcement of labor safety laws as derived from BLS data on regulatory agency inspections and Census Bureau data for work place establishments in individual states.

For this study, no effect was found for vocational or technical training on work injury risk where the analysis indicated no significant difference between young adult workers who obtained training from those reporting no training. However, the level of state enfor cement compliance of labor safety laws, measured as the time safety inspectors would need to inspect all work establishments in a state, did have a significant effect on the risk of work related injury. In states that took the longest time to inspect (least strict) young adult workers had almost 1.4 times the risk of injury as those working in states reporting shorter times to inspect (more strict).

The results of this study suggest that additional research should be done to differentiate safety awareness training for young workers from all other vocational and technical training to determine if there is an effect on injury prevention. More importantly, public policy at the national level on work injury prevention needs to recognize that state level implementation of occupational safety compliance programs varies widely and those states conducting less frequent work place inspections have higher risk for injury than those states conducting more frequent inspections.

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Second, I investigate how educational assortative mating shapes husbands and wives income trajectories over the course of marriage. I use multilevel dyad models to analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). Educational assortative mating is captured by three types of educational pairings of spouses: educational hypergamy in which the wife is less educated than the husband, educational homogamy in which both spouses have same levels of education, and educational hypogamy in which the wife is more educated than the husband. I find that change in husbands income with marital duration was similar regardless of educational pairings of spouses, whereas change in wives income varied by educational pairings of spouses such that wives in educational hypogamy exhibited more positive change in income over the marital life course. The findings suggest that it remains important for husbands to bring income into the family no matter what educational levels they have relative to their wives, whereas the rise in women's education and in prevalence of educational hypogamy likely protects women from earning less after marriage.

Lastly, I examine how educational assortative mating shapes patterns of female breadwinning status over the course of marriage. I use group-based trajectory models to analyze data from the NLSY79. I find substantial movement in and out of the primary breadwinner role by wives across marital years and great heterogeneity in trajectories of female breadwinning status across couples. In addition, educational assortative mating plays a role in shaping patterns of female breadwinning status: educationally hypogamous couples are less likely than educationally homogamous or hypergamous couples to follow the traditional trajectory characterized by virtually no chance of achieving a female breadwinning arrangement over the first twenty years of marriage.

SES is hypothesized to affect health over the life course in two ways. First, SES is thought to have cumulative effects on health, regardless of when adversity is experienced in the life course. In addition to those cumulative effects, it is argued that the experience of adverse socioeconomic conditions early in the life course is more detrimental to adult health than later disadvantage, since it is reflected in lower education opportunities, which in turn restrict achieved status and health in adulthood. Using data from the NLSY79, this study will therefore examine both the cumulative impact of life course socioeconomic status to health as well as the moderating contribution of early socioeconomic status at different life stages to this relationship. Findings suggest that SES does have cumulative effects on health through the life course and that individuals who experienced poverty in late adolescence have a higher return to employment.

Using prospective cohort data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and relying on a life course stratification framework, this study will determine the extent to which health insurance coverage contributes to socioeconomic differentials in adult health.

While previous research has shown that nonelderly privately insured individuals enjoy better health outcomes than their uninsured counterparts, the same relationship does not hold for those publicly insured through programs such as Medicaid. Because it is unclear whether this finding reflects a true causal relationship or is in fact due to selection bias on socioeconomic status (SES) and health, previous estimates of the contribution of health insurance to inequities in health may have been biased.

This study attempts to disentangle these competing hypotheses by using fixed effects models with sibling clusters to corroborate -- or refute -- the results of a conventional OLS regression. By controlling for unobserved factors shared by siblings such as parental genetic influences, sibling models estimate health insurance effects that are less affected by selection bias.

This article is concerned with the nonparametric statistical analysis of multiple binary sequences, a commonly occurring data structure. One example that we consider comes from dairy science, where each of a number of cows is tested for the presence of a pathogen infection throughout the lactation cycle. Sports statistics provide our second example, in which each of many baseball players produces a sequence of hits/no hits over the course of a season (Albright 1993). A third example comes from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), in which the employment and health status of a group of young people are monitored yearly by questionnaire (see Borus 1984). It is natural to allow correlation within each binary sequence when formulating models for such data. Among the various approaches, a particularly simple model says that each binary sequence is the realization of a Markov chain having some order of serial dependence. Zeroth-order chains correspond to independence, first-order chains exhibit serial dependence on the most recent binary variable, second-order chains depend on the most recent pair of variables, and so on.

The report, published June 2 in American Sociological Review, is one of the first to assess the health of single mothers. Researchers analyzed data on 3,400 women taken from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which tracks the health of a nationally representative sample of people who were ages 14 to 22 when the survey started.

The mothers were asked at age 40 to rate their health with a type of self-assessment considered a highly accurate indicator of health and future mortality.

Both black and white women who had children outside of marriage ranked their health as worse than women who had their first children while married. That was not the case, however, for Hispanic single mothers, who are more likely to have children in long relationships that closely resemble marriage, the authors said.

The findings are of concern because unmarried women account for almost 40 percent of births in the United States, up from 10 percent in 1960, said Kristi Williams, an associate professor of sociology at the Ohio State University and the paper’s lead author.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 14, 2011, on page D6 of the New York edition with the headline: DISPARITIES: Health Risks Seen for Single Mothers.

RESULTS: The prospective strategy produces a higher percentage of unwanted births than the retrospective strategy. But the two reports of wantedness are strongly associated – especially for the second birth (vs. other births) and for women with stable (vs. unstable) expectation patterns. Nevertheless, discordant reports are common and are predicted by women's characteristics.

Methods: This longitudinal prospective follow-up used 718,560 person-years of observation in a pooled data set of 5 high-quality nationally representative panels--National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and 1997, National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohorts of 1998 and 2011--constructed by the authors, covering 1980-2016. Differences in obesity incidence across birth cohorts and disparities in obesity incidence by sex and race/ethnicity (non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White) were tested in multivariate models. Data were analyzed from September 2018 to October 2021.

Results: Obesity incidence increased by approximately 6% for each 1 year of age (hazard ratio=1.06, 95% CI=1.05, 1.07); however, incidence was nonlinear, exhibiting an inverted "U"-shaped pattern before 15 years of age and then rising from adolescence through 30 years. Obesity incidence more than doubled between the cohorts born in 1957-1965 and those born in 1974-1985 during adolescence. There was no significant change among those born in 1991-1994 and 2003-2006 up to age 15 years. Compared with non-Hispanic White children, non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic children had higher obesity incidence in all study cohorts. The magnitude of these disparities on the relative scale remained stable throughout the study period.

This study uses a prospective design, only including children whose parents were married at the time of the child’s birth and who remained married at the child’s outset of high school. Using data from the 1979 version of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Child and Young Adult Supplement, I ran a series of probit models to estimate the effects of parental divorce during a child’s high school years on the likelihood of that child graduating from high school by the age of 20. The age limit of 20, rather than within four years, diminishes the problem of right-censorship.

Children whose parents divorce during the four years after the normal start of high school are over 9 percentage points less likely to graduate from high school by age 20 than their peers (p<0.05). These findings suggest that a reduction in the rate of divorce may lead to subsequent increase in the incidence of high school graduation. In turn, this ought to lead to improvements in adulthood outcomes for children, including increased earnings potential and improved overall health. The benefits to society may include increased tax revenue, decreased spending on social safety- net programs, and reduced crime rates.

In the second chapter, "Measuring the STEM Wage Premium Among College Graduates," I estimate the wage benefits associated with training in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), and assess the sensitivity of the STEM wage premium to changes in the way STEM is measured. Measuring STEM can differ in two ways: the definition of STEM (i.e., determining what fields are STEM) and incorporating STEM training into the empirical analysis with a dichotomous or continuous measure of STEM training. Using a sample of college graduates with college transcript data in the NLSY97, I compare a total of six measures STEM training: for three different definitions of STEM (based on lists published by three different U.S. government agencies), I construct a continuous measure of STEM training (based on the amount of STEM coursework completed in college) and a dichotomous measure (based on if the worker completed a STEM major). Although the results confirm the general finding that there is a STEM wage premium, they demonstrate tha t estimates of that premium are relatively insensitive to the definition of STEM training but highly sensitive to whether a dichotomous or continuous measure is used.

In the third chapter, "Education and Job Matching: A Two Cohort Comparison," I compare the incidence and log-wage penalty of overeducation and undereducation among two generations of college graduates. Mismatch is defined based on degree, where a worker is classified as overeducated (undereducated) is he completes a degree that is greater (less) than what is required by his occupation. Data for the older cohort (born 1957-1964) is from the NLSY79 and the younger cohort (born 1980-1984) from the NLSY97.

White non-Hispanic and Hispanic youth are compared in this study and found to have more similar than dissimilar work- and family-related attitudes as well as aspirations and expectations. Both groups indicate a high level of work commitment, particularly apparent among Hispanic males, and both want a fair wage for their work. Knowledge of world of work, however, is highest among non-Hispanic youth and among males. Differences regarding ideal, desired, and expected number of children are statistically significant between the two groups, but actual differences are rather small. A high congruence appears, for example, between Hispanic males and females in terms of their ideal, desired, and expected number of children--these attitudes tend toward the direction of non-traditional and thus do not support those studies characterizing the Hispanic family as male-dominated and non-egalitarian. Both groups aspire to education beyond high school and expect to achieve additional schooling. An important difference between these groups, nonetheless, is that Hispanic youth are more likely to drop out of school because of outside responsibilities such as family, financial, or work-related reasons than because of school-related reasons.

The final chapter includes the effect of parental conflict into skill development during childhood. Parental conflict is a non-tangible input related with psychological well-being of the parents. There is evidence that conflict adversely affects cognitive and non-cognitive skill development, but this is the first study that jointly analyzes the impact on both skills. Estimates suggest that reductions in conflict benefits skills and adult outcomes. Cognitive development is more affected during early childhood and non-cognitive development for later ages. The effect of reducing parental conflict on years of education completed is similar to the effect of increasing parental time but lower than the effect of increasing material investments.

Methods: Data on 6,199 pregnancies from 2,873 women followed from 1979 to 2012 by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 were analyzed in 2014. Associations between three adversity exposures before age 18 years (history of physical abuse, alcohol problems, or mental illness in the household) and two maternal weight outcomes (prepregnancy obesity and excessive gestational weight gain) were modeled separately using survey-adjusted log-binomial models.

Results: After adjusting for race/ethnicity and early-life socioeconomic factors, childhood physical abuse was associated with a 60% increase in the risk of prepregnancy obesity (adjusted risk ratio=1.6, 95% CI=1.1, 2.2). Household alcohol abuse was associated with a 30% increase in prepregnancy obesity (adjusted risk ratio=1.3, 95% CI=1.0, 1.7), as was household mental illness (adjusted risk ratio=1.3, 95% CI=0.8, 1.9), but the mental illness exposure was not significant. Physical abuse and household alcohol abuse were associated with a significant 20% increase in the risk of excessive gestational weight gain; mental illness was not.

Conclusions: Adversity in early life may affect maternal weight before and during pregnancy. Screening and treating women of reproductive age for childhood adversity and its negative effects could significantly reduce obesity-related health outcomes for women and their children.

The first essay examines whether one's wage is based on information about the performance of one's personal contacts. I study wage determination under two assumptions about belief formation: individual learning, under which employers observe only one's own characteristics, and social learning, under which employers also observe those of one's personal contacts. Using data on siblings in the NLSY79, I test whether a sibling's characteristics are priced into one's wage. If learning is social, then an older sibling's test score should typically have a larger adjusted impact on a younger sibling's log wage than vice versa. The empirical findings support this prediction. Furthermore, I perform several exercises to rule out other potential factors, such as asymmetric skill formation, human capital transfers, and role model effects.

The second essay analyzes the influence of macroeconomic conditions during childhood on the labor market performance of adults. Based on Census data, I document the relationship of unemployment rates in childhood to schooling, employment, and income as an adult. In addition, a sample from the PSID is used to study how the background attributes of parents raising children vary over the business cycle. Finally, information from the NLSY79-CH is examined in order to characterize the impact of economic fluctuations on parental caregiving. Overall, the evidence is consistent with a negative effect of the average unemployment rate in childhood on parental investments in children and the stock of human capital in adulthood.

The third essay studies the bilateral trade of divisible goods in the presence of stochastic transaction costs. The first-best solution requires each agent to transfer all of her good to the other agent when the transaction cost reaches a certain threshold value. However, in the absence of court-enforceable contracts, such a poli cy is not in centive compatible. We solve for the unique maximal symmetric subgame-perfect equilibrium, in which agents can realize some gains from trade by transferring their goods sequentially. Several comparative statics are derived. In some cases, the first-best outcome can be approximated as the agents become infinitely patient.

Using data on the AFQT scores of siblings in the NLSY79, I test for a form of statistical nepotism in which a sibling's performance is priced into a worker's wage. If learning is social, then an older sibling's test score should typically have a larger adjusted impact on a younger sibling's log wage than vice versa. By contrast, if learning is individual, then no such asymmetry should be present. The empirical findings provide strong support for the central prediction of the social learning model. Furthermore, I perform several exercises to identify social learning as the leading explanation for the main results, largely ruling out other potential factors, such as asymmetric skill formation, human capital transfers, and role model effects.

Before attempting to find solutions, [the author identifies] the causes for the extraordinary rise in obesity as of late. [The author addresses] these, and then look at some consequences. In an exercise using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 cohort). [The author assesses] the likelihood of a specific type of social consequence—marriage--using hazard models.

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An instrumental variable approach was used to estimate a causal effect of child BMI z-score on age of menarche. The instrumental variables were pre-pregnancy BMI, high gestational weight gain and smoking during pregnancy. We found strong effects of maternal age of menarche, birthweight, and child BMI z-score (−5.23, 95% CI [−7.35,−3.12]) for both African-Americans and whites. Age of menarche declined with increases in exposure to poverty during early childhood for whites. There was no effect of poverty for African-Americans. We used Oaxaca decomposition techniques to determine how much of the overall race difference in age of menarche was attributable to race differences in observable factors and how much was due to race dependent responses. The African-American/white difference in childhood BMI explained about 18% of the overall difference in age of menarche and birthweight differences explained another 11%.

We provide empirical evidence that relative deprivation but not absolute income was associated with birth weight in full term infants, controlling for tract poverty rate, maternal education, marital status, urban residence and maternal age. The findings provided qualified support for acceptance of an independent association between cumulative relative deprivation and full term infant birth weight, when not controlling for race/ethnicity. Evaluated at mean birth weight, a one standard deviation increase in cumulative relative deprivation led to a decrease in birth weight of approximately 1.5 ounces. We also provided evidence that the association between cumulative relative deprivation and birth weight was confounded by race/ethnicity. The mechanisms emphasized in the literature for a plausible relationship between health and relative deprivation, such as psychosocial stress and diminished purchasing power of a given level of income, were equally plausible as mechanisms through which race effects individual health. We found evidence that two behaviors which reduced birth weight (decreased weight gain during pregnancy and increased smoking during pregnancy) were positively associated with cumulative relative deprivation. The negative impact of cumulative relative deprivation on birth weight operated directly, when not controlling for race/ethnicity, and indirectly through its effect on decreased weight gain during pregnancy and increased smoking during pregnancy.

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This article reports on Elizabeth Harvey's study of the relationship between maternal employment and child development. The study, which utilizes NLSY79 and Children of the NLSY79 data, found that there was "no difference between children whose mothers were employed vs. children whose mothers were not employed during the first three years."

The intention of Welfare programs is to benefit low income Americans, especially children. Yet the evidence indicates that children and parents are actively harmed rather than helped by welfare.

Nearly all Welfare aid for children goes to single parent households. But current research indicates that both Welfare dependence and single parenthood have significant deleterious effects on children's development, impeding their ability to become successful members of mainstream society.

One of the four principal goals of the welfare reform of 1996 was to increase married two-parent families. The current welfare reform proposals advanced by President George W. Bush and recently enacted by the House of Representatives (H.R. 4737) include specific policies aimed at encouraging healthy marriages. Supporters of this approach contend that an increase in healthy marriages will improve child well-being and reduce child poverty. Opponents argue that there is little or no link between increasing marriage and reducing poverty. They argue that the government should ignore the issue of marriage and should focus instead on increasing maternal education as the primary means of combating child poverty.

Given this policy context, this Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report examines two questions: Is marriage effective in reducing child poverty? What is the comparative effect of marriage and maternal education in combating child poverty? Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), the CDA analysis produced the following findings:

• Marriage plays a powerful role in lifting children out of poverty.
• While both marriage and maternal education play a positive role in alleviating child poverty, in general, stable marriage has a far stronger effect than does maternal schooling.

Maternal education without marriage is generally ineffective in reducing child poverty. The poverty levels of children raised by never-married mothers remain high even if the mother has a high-school or college degree.

This CDA Report attempts to identify the primary causes of child poverty in the United States, using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a representative sample of Americans produced by the U.S. Department of Labor.2 We also examine the differences in black and white child poverty and seek to uncover the causes of those differences.