Employment, Timing of First Birth, and Child Outcomes.

Univ Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

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Abstract

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This study is an investigation of the life-course sequencing of school completion, employment, and motherhood for the cohorts of women who entered their childbearing and workforce ages before and after the 1990s Welfare reforms, and the relationship of this sequencing to early-childhood poverty. Positive assessments based on initial indicators of impacts of the reforms in the late-1990s economic boom have been followed more recently by calls for a reassessment in a time of major economic recession. The expiration of single mothers' eligibility for cash welfare without having replacement income from employment is especially concerning for its impact on deep poverty in households with young children. Although a major goal of the reforms was to change behaviors leading to welfare dependency, little is known about how the women's major life-course event sequences changed with the implementation of the reforms. In particular, little is known about changes in the sequencing of women's obtaining stable employment, possibly preceded by obtaining a 2- or 4-year college diploma, relative to the timing of her first birth. Both policy and demographic sources of change are addressed in the present study. The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) and the Survey of Income and Income and Program Participation (SIPP) are used to compare women observed in pre-reform, transition, and post-reform cohorts. Additional analyses of post-reform cohorts are conducted with panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort (NLSY97). These three data sources are chosen for their representativeness of the pre-reform and post-reform populations of the periods under investigation, including representativeness of Hispanic immigrant cohorts that have contributed to substantial compositional shifts among young families living in poverty since the 1990s. A major contribution of this study will be to re-orient the scholarly and policy debate toward a focu on how schooling, employment, and family outcomes unfold across life-course trajectories, whereas previous work has largely been about how policies affect these outcomes in any given year. A second accomplishment of this study will be to integrate analyses of behavior change in response to the welfare reforms with analysis of the changes in demographic composition that underlie the young-adult life-course trajectories that carry the greatest risks for family and chil poverty.