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Second, obesity may change how adolescents grapple with autonomy: issues of self-control, readiness to change, and their relationships with parents and other authority figures. That is, being larger may give some adolescents a physical advantage over their peers and may make them more likely to challenge adults.

I used data from the National Longitudinal Study to estimate income elasticity with respect to parental earnings. In particular, my goal was to measure the difference in the degree of income mobility experienced by daughters versus sons, as well as the relevance of maternal earnings to income mobility.

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DATA: In this study, we will analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 (NLSY79) and Children of the NLSY79. The NLSY79 is a panel survey of 12,686 men and women who were 14-21 years old in 1978 and is designed to gather detailed data about employment, education/training, income, fertility, and family characteristics. The data are nationally representative of people living in the United States in 1978. The Children of the NLSY79 is a supplemental survey of all children born to the 6,283 women in the original sample. The supplemental survey provides data on the cognitive development of the children born to these mothers.

METHODS: We use a lagged dependent variables approach to model the relationship between early childhood cognitive scores and unemployment insurance receipt. It is possible that parental characteristics associated with employment termination and layoffs are also correlated with child cognitive outcomes. To minimize this selection bias threat, our sample includes only those families who faced an unanticipated firm closure. Our baseline models control for as many measurable characteristics as possible that might differ between short-term and long-term UI participants and be related to child outcomes. However, endogeneity is still a substantial problem because those who leave UI may be systematically different from those who experience prolonged exposure to UI in unmeasured ways that are correlated with child outcomes. To further reduce the possibility of selection bias, we use a family fixed effects model that compares siblings' outcomes when UI was received to those when UI was not received.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS: This research can inform public policy in important ways. UI has often been criticized for creating disincentives to find work. However, one very good reason for states to provide UI to displaced workers is to minimize the negative effects of unemployment spells that might be associated with reduced income levels. Currently, very little is known about the effects of parental UI receipt on children's cognitive or behavioral outcomes. This study seeks to address this area of need in the research base, given the current focus and multiple expansions of UI eligibility across the states.

This commentary documents serious pitfalls in the statistical analyses and the interpretation of empirical evidence presented in The Bell Curve. Most importantly, the role of education is re-evaluated and it is shown how, by neglecting it, The Bell Curve grossly overstates the case for IQ as a dominant determinant of social success. The commentary calls attention to important features of logistic regression coefficients, discusses sampling and measurement uncertainties of estimates based on observational sample data, and points to substantial limitations in interpreting regression coefficients of correlated variables.

Results: We found limited support for a direct effect of childhood SES disadvantage on depressive symptoms in middle age. Instead, much of the effects of childhood SES on later-year depressive symptoms appear to be mediated by SES in young adulthood. Further, the long-term pathway is mediated through the influence of health risk behaviors and negative life events in middle adulthood.

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Method: Narrative literature review.

Results: Although substantial controversy persists, the accumulated evidence suggests that nonparental care does not necessarily have either beneficial or detrimental effects on infants and children, although it can have such effects. In some circumstances, care providers establish relationships with children that have significant effects on development, and this increases the importance of ensuring that care providers are well trained, behave sensitively, and are stable rather than ephemeral figures in children's lives. Nonparental care is associated with behaviour problems (including aggression and noncompliance) when the care is of poor quality and opportunities for meaningful relationships with stable care providers are not available, however.

Conclusion: The effects of out-of-home care vary depending on the quality of care as well as the characteristics of individual children, including their age, temperaments, and individual backgrounds.

See: Dunifon, Rachel: Influence of Grandparents in Single-Mother Families

The second paper investigates differences in health insurance coverage for children whose parents cohabit and those whose parents are married, with a focus on families that include a social (non-biological) parent. Child health insurance coverage may vary as a function of differences in access to economic resources and differences in access to employer sponsored health insurance policies between family structures. Results from this paper suggest children in cohabiting and social-father families are more likely to have public and less likely to have private coverage than those in (married) two-biological parent families.

The final paper uses an instrumental variables strategy to examine associations of an exogenous change in income due to expansions in the Earned income Tax Credit with family health behaviors, child health outcomes, and children's health insurance coverage. Results suggest that children in families that experience an exogenous increase in income are more likely to be covered by (private) health insurance, to have gone to the dentist in the previous year, and to be reported by their mother as being in excellent health.

This dissertation has implications for better understanding factors that place children at risk for health problems as well as for identify pathways by which social policy programs and the healthcare system can promote optimal quality of life for low-income children and families.

Objective: This study analyzed the impact of delayed and unmet access to prescription drugs on anxiety-related outcomes, including anxiety, inability to stop or control worrying, worrying too much, trouble relaxing, trouble sitting still, being annoyed or irritable, and fear of future events, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: A retrospective observational study was performed using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 Child and Young Adult dataset, encompassing 2,193 individuals. One-way multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between access to prescription drugs and anxiety-related symptoms.

Results: The findings show that, before the pandemic, instances of delayed/unable to access prescription drugs were either not linked to anxiety symptoms or, in some cases, were linked to anxiety symptoms but no different than during the pandemic. Delayed access to prescription drugs amid the pandemic was significantly linked with increases in anxiety symptoms not found pre-pandemic, including worrying too much (F = 18.433, p < .001, η2p = 0.017), trouble relaxing (F = 11.423, p < .001, η2p = 0.010), and being easily annoyed or irritable (F = 3.881, p = .021, η2p = 0.004). Similarly, unmet access to prescription drugs amid the pandemic was significantly linked with increases in anxiety-related symptoms not found pre-pandemic, including an inability to stop or control worrying (F = 14.666, p < .001, η2p = 0.013) and worrying too much (F = 18.433, p < .001, η2p = 0.017).

Conclusions: These results have implications for pharmacy administrators and policymakers seeking to understand and limit adverse mental health outcomes within pharmacy during times of crisis.

Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we examined the cross-generational impact of divorce on mental health (according to the Behavior Problems and Child Depression Report), following individuals of different ages. We compared maternal cousins using the discordant kinship model (Garrison and Rogers 2016). Controlling for genetic confounds, results suggest that divorce does not impact children's mental health by itself, however, the timing of a divorce might be a factor.

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Study Design: A cross-sectional analysis of a representative sample of US homeowners aged 38–46 surveyed in 1998–2006.

Methods: Subjects were 3667 adults living in owned homes aged 38–46 who reported being either employed or unemployed. Logistic models were performed using maximum likelihood estimation to estimate the relative risk of self-reporting fair or poor health with regard to employment status and how employment status interacted with mortgage status.

Results: Among homeowners, being unemployed for more than 13 weeks with a mortgage is associated with a higher likelihood of reporting fair or poor health (odds ratio 2.38, 95% confidence interval 1.28–4.45). Being unemployed for more than 13 weeks with a mortgage loan that is more than 80% of the value of the home is associated with a greater likelihood of reporting fair or poor health (odds ratio 8.99, 95% confidence interval 2.50–32.29).

I link mother-child pairs across the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 and its Children and Young Adult Survey, and use a marginal structural model with inverse probability of treatment weighting to estimate the causal effects. I find that a mother's pre-college educational experiences contribute significantly to the total effect of her schooling on her child's outcomes. The total effect decomposes into a direct effect and an indirect effect. The direct effect is stronger than the indirect effect, suggesting that a mother's earlier educational experiences independently influence her child's high school curriculum beyond influencing the probability she reached a certain level of schooling. These findings confirm that identifying the causes of parental attainment and the multiple pathways that connect them to children's outcomes yields insights about how families transmit advantages and disadvantages across generations.

Two separate datasets from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 and the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 were utilized to address research questions and research hypotheses under the lens of the expected utility theory. The results showed shifts in household's risk preferences, homeownership rates, and demographic and economic characteristics between periods. Compared to households who preferred lowest risk level, households who preferred highest risk level were more likely to own a home in both periods. The relationships between household’s risk preference and homeownership decisions did not change between periods. However, some relationships between household's demographic and economic characteristics and homeownership decisions changed between periods.

This study begins by examining the impact of both cognitive and noncognitive skills on between- and within-education group wage inequality, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and quantile regressions. While the economic return to education has been proposed as a parsimonious explanation for rising wage inequality and its currently high level, this account focuses mainly on between-education group wage inequality and the demand for cognitive skills. Results from my analysis shows that (1) while the economic return to education is the robust explanation for wage inequality, both cognitive and noncognitive skills contribute significantly to reducing the college wage premium and wage dispersions within college graduates; (2) noncogntive skills play a more pronounced role in wage inequality among college graduates; and (3) the wage effect of both skills as an early predictor of earnings strengthens as workers reach their prime ages in the labor market. These findings suggest that the family may be an important institutional actor responsible for wage inequality.

In the subsequent chapter, I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the NLSY79 to investigate the role of cognitive and noncognitive skills in individual patterns of educational assortative mating in adolescence and adulthood. This paper argues that to the extent that skill differences are associated with education-based mate selection, intergenerational mobility operates at an intimate level of the mate selection process. Multinomial logistic regression results show that cognitive and noncognitive skills are positively associated with the probability of transitioning into marrying college graduates and, to a lesser degree, with that of dating college-bound partners. I also find a gender difference in the role of skill differences: noncognitive skills play a more salient role in education-based mate sorting for women, whereas it is cognitive skills that primarily do so for men, indicating a normative attitude toward mate selection that regards "smartness" as more attractive to women than to men. These findings imply that the intergenerational transmission of familial resources affects children's mate selection by not simply investing in their educational attainment but also strengthening their cognitive and noncognitive skills.

Finally, I reevaluate the socioeconomic effect of teenage childbearing. Despite a 30-year debate about the consequences of adolescent fertility, finding its "true" effect still has been elusive. This concern stems from (1) theoretical considerations of early motherhood as a harmful event and/or its higher likelihood among disadvantaged young women and (2) methodological challenges against selection bias. Alternative models have been developed, but tend to rely on strong assumptions and unrepresentative samples. This paper extends the extant literature by taking a counterfactual approach using propensity score matching, conducting a sensitivity analysis employing the Rosenbaum bounds to address selection bias on unobserved covariates, and using data from Add Health. Results show that while teen mothers' preexisting socioeconomic disadvantages and their lower level of cognitive and noncognitive skills play a nontrivial role, teen motherhood has significantly negative effects on early socioeconomic outcomes with the exception of public assistance receipt. The sensitivity analysis suggests that selection bias due to unobserved covariates would have to be very powerful to nullify these findings.

Methods: Longitudinal and cross-sectional data were obtained from four nationally representative surveys: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, National Health Interview Survey, and National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97). The analysis tracked age trends in BMI by time, which allowed for the examination of how BMI changed during the transition to adulthood and whether the patterns of change varied by period. Data best suited for trend analysis were identified. Age trends in BMI by gender and race were graphed and regression analysis was used to test for significant differences in the trends using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

Results: BMI increased sharply in the adolescent ages, beginning in the 1990s and among young adults around 2000. This age pattern of BMI increase was more dramatic among females and blacks, particularly black females.

Conclusions: BMI increased during the transition to adulthood and these increases have grown larger over time. Obesity prevention efforts should focus on this high-risk transition period, particularly among minority populations.

Methods: This study used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. The final sample consisted of 834 individuals, and four points in time were used: 34, 36, 40, and 50 years of age. The Latent Growth Model (LGM) was used to estimate the trajectories of depression.

Results: The trajectories of depression present a non-linear change, referring to V-shaped curve. The conditional model shows that there are significant individual differences on initial status. Males were negatively associated with the latent initial level of depression. Individuals who showed higher self-esteem and cognitive ability were negatively associated with the latent initial level of depression. In addition, health insurance was negatively associated with the latent initial levels of depression. Both employment and net worth predicted lower intercepts of depression.

The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), which is a nation-wide representative data set for individuals in the United States, was used for analysis. A sample of 834 individuals who discussed their mental health status at four points in time (34, 36, 40, and 50 years of age) was analyzed. The latent growth model was conducted using M-plus statistical package. The research questions are as follows: 1) What are the trajectories of mental health among middle aged-adults (34 to 50 years of age)? 2) Is economic well-being (net worth and employment) associated with mental health?

Major findings reported in this study were that the trajectories of mental health show non-linear change, with lowest levels of depression at 40 and higher levels of depression at 34, 36, and 50 years of age. Male, self-esteem, cognitive ability, health insurance, employment, and net worth predicted lower intercepts of depression. In addition, even after including time-varying covariates, the trajectories of mental health still show non-linear change. Employment was associated with lower risks of depression at 34, 36, 40, and 50 years, and net worth was also associated with lower risks of depression at 34, 36, and 50 years.

Methods: The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 for Children and Young Adults (NLSY79 CY) were used to pair data from single mothers and their young adult children. A total of 3,139 single mother and young adult children pairs were chosen for analysis. Ordinary least squares and logistic regression analysis were employed to examine the mediation model.

Results: Single mothers' poverty status was negatively associated with both their young adult children's educational attainment and income. The young adult children's educational attainment was positively related to their income. Results showed a full mediation of the relationship between single mothers' poverty status and their young adult children's income via their young adult children's educational attainment.

Methods: The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 for Children and Young Adults (NLSY79 CY) were used to select mother and children dyads. A total of 5140 dyads were selected as the final sample. We used a mediation model to test mediators in the relationship between mother's income and young adult children's fast food consumption.

Results: Mother's income was significantly related to their young adult children's educational attainment. Mother's income was negatively related to fast food consumption. This study revealed partial mediation of the relationship between mother's income and their young adult children's fast food consumption via their young adult children's educational attainment.

Methods: The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 for Children and Young Adults (NLSY79 CY) were employed to pair mothers and their adult children. We used six NLSY79 CY waves from 2004 to 2014. A total of 2,596 single mother-headed household dyads were selected. Variables repeatedly measured at six points in time were tested using the Random Effects Model.

Results: Results show that single mothers’ higher frequency of employment from pregnancy to when their children were four years old was significantly related to their children’s self-esteem and depression at above the age of 18 years.

Discussion: Providing more opportunities for single mothers to get a job is necessary to enhance their children’s mental health over time. Accessible job training programs for single mothers and free provision of accessible and high-quality childcare services by the government should be focused on single mothers, particularly those who are pregnant or have children under the age of 5 years, for their children to positively develop self-esteem and reduce depression over time. The intergenerational transmission of inequality between single mothers and their adult children can be addressed by providing more opportunities for well-paying stable jobs with flexible schedules to single mothers, so they are better able to provide their children with time, support and resources.

Methods: The present study used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 (NLSY 79) collected from 1979 to 2012 and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 for Children and Young Adults collected from 1986 to 2012. The two sets of data were merged, and children were matched with their mother. Approximately 4,000 pairs were selected for the study sample. The sample included 1937 White, 1319 Black, and 853 Hispanic children. Depression was measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale, which was used for both mothers and their children. Baseline variables (age, education, marital status, the Armed Forces Qualification Test, urban/rural region, poverty status, employment) were included. Ordinary linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the research questions.

Methods: This study used two data sets from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 for Children and Young Adults (NLSY79 CY). A total of 9584 dyads was used for the final sample. The mediation model suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986) was used to examine.

Results: Young adult children whose mother is in poverty are less likely to be employed compared to their counterparts with a mother not in poverty. Maternal poverty is significantly associated with young adult children's self-esteem. Young adult children's employment is statistically related to their self-esteem. Young adult children's employment status mediated the relationship between maternal poverty and young adult children's self-esteem.

Design: Longitudinal analysis.

Setting: United States of America.

Participants: A total of 8157 adolescents and young adults aged 14 to 21 years at the start of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 with self-reported measures of height, weight, and diabetes status (type unspecified) from 1981 through 2006.

Main Exposure: Excess BMI-years, which were calculated by subtracting the actual BMI from the reference BMI (25.0 for adults or 85th percentile for adolescents) for each study year and cumulating excess BMI for the study duration.

Main Outcome Measure: We conducted logistic regression models to predict presumed type 2 diabetes (after excluding presumed type 1 diabetes) as a function of age, sex, race, excess BMI-years, and specific interactions.

Results: A higher level of excess BMI-years was associated with an increased risk of diabetes. For example, on average, white men aged 40 years with 200 excess BMI-years had 2.94 times (95% confidence interval, 2.36-3.67) higher odds of developing diabetes compared with men of the same age and race with 100 excess BMI-years. For a given level of excess BMI-years, younger compared with older and Hispanic and black compared with white individuals had higher risk of developing diabetes. Our study is limited by use of self-reported data without specification of diabetes type.

Conclusions: Because younger compared with older individuals have a higher risk of self-reported diabetes for a given level of excess BMI-years and cumulative exposure to excess BMI is increasing among younger US birth cohorts, public health interventions should target younger adults.

The second chapter examines the return to self-employment experience in the labor market. There are two contrasting views of self-employment. First, there is the archetypal entrepreneur, who starts a business with the intention of ownership until failure or retirement. The second type describes the worker who enters self-employment when paid opportunities are poor and exits when a better opportunity arises. Using data from the NLSY from 1979-2004, I show that individuals with a single spell in self-employment, termed "non-repeaters," conform better to the career driven type of self-employment, while individuals with multiple spells in self-employment display characteristics consistent with opportunistic self-employment. Repeaters are more likely to be unemployed in the same year they are self-employed and have shorter durations in self-employment than non-repeaters. Non-repeaters are more educated and are more likely to be a professional. Evidence from repeater wages suggest that repeaters are not lower quality workers. Repeaters have higher wages than non-repeaters and non-entrepreneurs with similar characteristics. Additionally, the return repeaters receive for their self-employment experience is greater than both the return to wage experience and the return to self-employment experience for non-repeaters. Non-repeaters receive much lower returns to their self-employment experience, a pattern that can also be explained if non-repeaters are more likely to have career aspirations. Those with career intentions are more likely to exit due to failure. Alternatively, they are more likely to allow the skills required in paid employment to depreciate, or may have been lacking these skills altogether, thus requiring careers in self-employment.

To examine the association between women's wages and the availability of flexible work hours and company-provided child care, three sets of alternative hypotheses are tested. First, the availability of such policies might be positively related to the wages of women and associated with a decrease in child wage penalties. Using Ordinary Least Squares and fixed effects models, this study finds evidence to support this, substantiating the belief that working women with the provisions of such policies receive higher wages than working women without the provisions. In addition, the wage premiums associated with such policies sufficiently offset the well-known child wage penalty.

Second, the wage effects associated with such policies will still be persistent, even after controlling for a wide range of confounding covariates, including demographic variable, human capital, and job characteristics. Using the longitudinal data to control for such confounding covariates, this dissertation finds that different accumulations of human capital, in part, account for wage differentials between women who have such policy provisions and women who do not. But, the significant wage premiums created by flexible work hours and company-provided child care are still substantial, even after controlling for demographic, human capital, and job characteristics. Moreover, the association between the provision of such policies and women's wages vary by industry and occupation.

Third, there might be causal relationship between the provisions of such policies and higher wages of working women and both might be due to time-invariant, unobserved heterogeneity. Using fixed effects models, this dissertation finds very little evidence to support this.

To test the differential effects of flexible work hours and company-provided child care on wages of women, this study uses propensity score matching and finds wage premiums for both working mothers and nonmothers (flexible work hours) and for only working mothers (company-provided child care). Moreover, combining the matching and regression adjustment on the matched sample, this study finds significantly and substantially lower wages for working mothers than their nonmother counterparts, as a result of motherhood status, when both groups have the availability of such policies as well as when both groups do not have such policies.

The primary policy implication of this study is that developing and expanding flexible work hours and child care provisions should create a better balance between parental employment and family responsibilities and, as a consequence, a secure source of income undiluted by a wage penalty for motherhood. Other policy implications are that enriching family benefit packages, such as more generous child-related leave and tax and benefit policies, would help address the balance between work and family needs, serving to increase the wages not only for working women but for women in general. Finding new venues that reconcile the roles of government with work organizations is proposed to create greater balance between work and family life for working women.

Methods: Data are from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth main survey and young adult survey in 2004. The sample includes 2,530 adolescents aged 14-19. A stratified, propensity matching method was used to determine the treatment effect of public housing and subsidized housing residence, respectively.

Results: There was no significant relationship between violence, heavy alcohol or heavy marijuana use, or other drug use and public housing residence. However, subsidized housing residents had significantly lower rates of violence and hard drug use, and marginally significant lower rates of heavy marijuana/alcohol use.

Conclusions: First, the results suggest that the depiction of risk behavior among teens in public housing needs to be clarified. Labeling or stereotyping teens living in public and subsidized housing as violent and/or drug users is misleading. Second, the results illustrate the value of distinguishing between public housing and subsidized housing populations in academic studies. Third, and most importantly, the present results indicate that the consistent, positive effect of vouchers is not due to a lower standard among the typical comparison group: public housing. Therefore, future studies should focus on conceptualizing and analyzing the ways that subsidized housing protects adolescent residents, beyond comparisons to public housing environments.

This Note develops and tests a model of labor supply behavior near the birth of a first child. The model postulates that changes in labor supply are related to changes in a woman's reservation wage, since the market wage she is offered is assumed constant over the period. The reservation wage rises over the course of the pregnancy. After the delivery, the presence of an infant raises the value of the mother's time in the home. Thus, labor supply is hypothesized to relate to market wages as well as to factors that influence home productivity. The measures of home productivity include education, marital status, and family income other than the wife's earnings. The authors test this model on data for the 1980s, a time when major changes in labor force behavior occurred. The results support the hypothesis that women with higher wages are more likely to work both during pregnancy and after giving birth. Women with fewer sources of other family income are also more likely to work.

Research design: The Monte Carlo simulation study compared strategies to impute missing data in continuous and categorical covariates for estimation of propensity scores. Manipulated conditions included sample size, the number of covariates, the size of the treatment effect, missing data mechanism, and percentage of missing data. Imputation strategies included MI-across and SI by joint modeling or multivariate imputation by chained equations (MICE).

Results: The results indicated that the MI-across method performed well, and SI also performed adequately with smaller percentages of missing data. The illustrative example demonstrated MI and SI, propensity score estimation, calculation of propensity score weights, covariate balance evaluation, estimation of the average treatment effect on the treated, and sensitivity analysis using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

I find relatively larger effects of body composition on wage levels in Not Worth the Weight: The Relationship between Body Composition and Wages, and relatively smaller effects of family income on body composition in Poor Choices: The Effects of Family Income on Body Composition. In Not Worth the Weight, I hypothesize that the negative impact of body composition increases at higher wage levels because the associated positions require additional education and perhaps a slimmer figure. The results show that for women, the effects of body composition on wage levels are larger than for men, and a higher wage level is associated with a higher wage penalty for being overweight. Poor Choices is unable to prove that low family income has a significantly large impact on body composition.

In The Heavy Cost of Healthcare: The Ex Ante Moral Hazard Effect of Health Insurance Possession on Body Composition, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, augmented with state-level food and tobacco prices, in an attempt to prove there is ex ante moral hazard associated with the possession of health insurance such that the insured are more likely to be overweight or obese. I hypothesize that the effect is larger when an individual is covered by government health insurance and smaller when the individual is covered by private insurance. The analysis shows that the ex ante moral hazard effect is larger when Medicaid covers the individual. When I control for individual fixed effects as well as endogeneity, however, results are insignificant. Thus it is inconclusive whether insurance has an impact on body composition. I conclude with suggestions for future research and effective policies to combat the public health epidemic of overweight and obesity.

In my second chapter, I study a second feature of bankruptcy law: means-testing in "fresh-start" bankruptcy. One rationale for the policy was that households with the means to repay their debts could choose Chapter 13 'repayment plan' bankruptcy instead. Using data from bankruptcy filings and the NLSY, I show there is minimal substitution into Chapter 13. This suggests that there is a Chapter 13 puzzle which requires further investigation. In addition to demonstrating the existence of this puzzle, I offer evidence that households without real property are less likely to substitute into Chapter 13.

Methods: Mother-child dyads (n = 7539) were included from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, a nationally representative cohort study in the USA (1979-2012). Log-binomial regression models were used to analyse associations between weight gain and the outcomes: high birthweight (>4000 g) and overweight/obesity at ages 2-5, 6-11 and 12-19 years.

Results: Excessive weight gain was positively associated, and inadequate weight gain was negatively associated with high birthweight after confounder adjustment (P < 0.05). Only excessive weight gain was associated with overweight in early, middle and late childhood. These associations were not significant in Hispanics or Blacks although racial/ethnic interaction was only significant ages 12-19 years (P = 0.03).

Design: We analyzed data from 4436 pairs of mothers and their children in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (1981-2014). We used latent-class growth modeling in addition to national recommendations for prepregnancy BMI, gestational weight gain, and postpartum weight retention to create maternal weight trajectory groups. We used modified Poisson regression models to assess the associations between maternal weight trajectory group and offspring obesity at 3 age periods (2–5, 6–11, and 12–19 y).

Results: Our analysis using maternal weight trajectories based on either latent-class results or recommendations showed that the risk of child obesity was lowest in the lowest maternal weight trajectory group. The differences in obesity risk were largest after 5 y of age and persisted into adolescence. In the latent-class analysis, the highest-order maternal weight trajectory group consisted almost entirely of women who were obese before pregnancy and was associated with a >2-fold increase in the risk of offspring obesity at ages 6-11 y (adjusted RR: 2.39; 95% CI: 1.97, 2.89) and 12-19 y (adjusted RR: 2.74; 95% CI: 2.13, 3.52). In the analysis with maternal weight trajectory groups based on recommendations, the risk of child obesity was consistently highest for women who were overweight or obese at the beginning of pregnancy.

This study does not aim to cover all aspects of the complex topic of the heterogeneity of human capital and its valuation on the labour market, but instead focuses on the following areas: specificity of human capital, the public-private sector wage gap, the ethnic wage gap, and the ethnic fringe benefit gap. This dissertation fi lls several gaps in the existing literature in these four areas.

Both Estonian and US data are used in the thesis, including the Estonian Labour Force Survey and the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Different analytical methods are applied to these data, including quantile regression, ordinary least squares regression, and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition.

The main results of this thesis include development of a human capital specificity measure, estimation of the public-private sector wage gap on Estonian data, analysis of the ethnic wage gap in Estonia and the black-white fringe benefit gap in the U.S. The results indicate that both the public-private sector and ethnic wage gaps in Estonia are related to the transition process. The black-white fringe benefit gap is to some extent explained by the black-white wage gap.

Fatherhood brings new financial responsibilities so that, due the added cost of supporting a child, parents must increase their earnings or reduce their own material living standards. This paper asks about the linkages between earnings and child support payments. We begin by examining the job market success of unwed fathers. Do young unwed fathers earn significantly less than other young men? If so, what accounts for their disadvantages? Are the differences between unwed fathers and married fathers caused by differences in worker capabilities, such as low education and limited work experience, or differences in worker effort? Do young unwed fathers eventually experience rapid earnings growth or do their earnings stagnate? The child support payment record of unwed fathers is examined as well as the relationship between increased earnings and added support payments. A common assumption guiding public policy is that increased earnings among unwed fathers will generate increased support payments. Findings bear on questions concerning the appropriate government role in dealing with earnings deficiencies of unwed fathers. Should public programs provide targeted employment and training assistance to these young men? How should programs link the fulfillment of child support obligations with job-related services? Do adjustments in government benefit programs make sense? The paper concludes by reporting on demonstration projects.

Copyright of Community College Review is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)

• Personal earnings
• Household economic resources
• Marital and fertility behaviors
• Second-generation outcomes

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In all analyses, we find that teen childbearing plays only a small, if any, causal role in children's performance on standardized tests, reported use of marijuana, or fighting. Pre-birth characteristics of teen mothers, birth order, and family size are more important factors in determining this set of outcomes. For other outcomes, namely grade repetition, early sexual initiation, and truancy, the fixed effects and miscarriage analyses produce differing results. Teen childbearing has no sizeable or statistically significant results for any of our outcomes in the miscarriage analysis. However, the fixed effects results suggest teen childbearing is associated with grade retention in school, school truancy, and possibly with early initiation of sexual activity. We interpret these differing results to suggest that teen mothers share more in common with other young women who conceive, but due to miscarriage, do not carry their pregnancies to term than they do with their own siblings who delay childbearing. It is these commonalities that appear to drive the zero-order association between early fertility and several negative behavioral consequences for off-spring.

This essay examines the issue of youth crime. We begin by laying out the basic facts and trends relevant to youth crime over the last thirty years. We then consider both the social costs of youth crime and the personal risks and costs borne by the criminals themselves. After reviewing the various hypotheses as to the determinants of crime identified in the previous literature, we present three new sets of estimates that shed light on the issue. The first set of regressions use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to explore the correlates of crime at the individual level. The second analysis focuses on census tract-level homicide data for the city of Chicago over a thirty year period. These data provide a means of better understanding the influence of social factors and local labor market conditions on youth crime. The final data set is a state-level panel covering fifteen years. The state-level analysis is ideal for examining the impact of the criminal justice system (and to a lesser extent economic factors). We use these three sets of estimates to determine the extent to which observed fluctuations in the correlates of crime can explain the time series pattern of juvenile crime over the last three decades.