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Title: The Child Asthma Epidemic: Consequences for Women's Labor Market Behavior
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Feng, Peihong
Reagan, Patricia Benton
The Child Asthma Epidemic: Consequences for Women's Labor Market Behavior
Working Paper, Department of Economic, The Ohio State University, 2003.
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, The Ohio State University
Keyword(s): Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Asthma; Child Health; Children, Illness; Disability; Maternal Employment

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

By 1995, almost 22% of disabled children were disabled by asthma, making asthma the single most common cause of childhood disability in the United States. The presence of a child disabled by asthma poses unique barriers to the labor market activity of single mothers, because the symptoms are episodic and particularly disruptive of children's routine activities. This paper develops a model that differentiates the effects on maternal labor market activity of asthma from other conditions that lead to childhood disability. The model predicts differential responses of single and married mothers. These hypotheses are tested on a longitudinal sample of mothers. We find that a child disabled by asthma reduces labor force participation of single mothers by over 7% and reduces desired annual hours by 255. No statistically significant effects are found for single mothers of children disabled by other conditions. Married mothers have similar responses regardless of the type of disability. A child disabled for any reason reduces married mother's labor force participation by a modest 2.5%.
Bibliography Citation
Feng, Peihong and Patricia Benton Reagan. "The Child Asthma Epidemic: Consequences for Women's Labor Market Behavior." Working Paper, Department of Economic, The Ohio State University, 2003..