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Title: Disentangling Dynamics of Family Poverty and Child Disability: What if Disability Comes First?
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Porterfield, Shirley
Tracey, Colleen
Disentangling Dynamics of Family Poverty and Child Disability: What if Disability Comes First?
Presented: San Diego, CA, Society for Social Work and Research Meetings, January 2003.
Also: http://csd.wustl.edu/Publications/Documents/WP03-01.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Society for the Study of Social Problems
Keyword(s): Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Child Health; Children, Poverty; Disability; Divorce; Poverty; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF); Welfare

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Point-in-time research indicates that children with disabilities are significantly more likely to live in families in poverty than are children without disabilities. However it does not follow that children with disabilities or chronic illness are more likely to be born into families in poverty than children who are not diagnosed with anything. Thus, poverty may result from the birth of the disabled child rather than be a causal factor in the disability. To date, no other research has discussed this issue of chronology between poverty and disability.

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.

Bibliography Citation
Porterfield, Shirley and Colleen Tracey. "Disentangling Dynamics of Family Poverty and Child Disability: What if Disability Comes First?" Presented: San Diego, CA, Society for Social Work and Research Meetings, January 2003.