A complete account of the U.S. child care subsidy system requires an understanding of its implications for both parental and child well-being. Although the effects of child care subsidies on maternal employment and child development have been recently studied, many other dimensions of family...

In this paper we investigate the effect of relative income on marital status. We develop an identity model based on Akerlof and Kranton (2000) and apply it to the marriage decision. The empirical evidence is consistent with the idea that people are more likely to marry when their incomes...

I use variation in state EITCs between 1997-2005 to identify changes in informal and regular labor supply by unmarried men and women with children. Men’s participation in the informal sector declines by 6 percentage points if a state EITC increases by 10% of the federal credit. Usual...

In the United States, the Great Recession has been marked by severe shocks to labor and housing markets. In this study, we combine longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) with administrative data on local area unemployment rates and state-level mortgage...

As maternal incarceration may help, harm, or have no effect on child wellbeing, increases in the risk of maternal imprisonment are relevant to scholars interested in both mass imprisonment and the forces that shape inequalities in child wellbeing. Unfortunately, with the exception of a few...

Research on the immigrant paradox healthier behaviors and outcomes among more socioeconomically disadvantaged immigrants is mostly limited to the U.S. Hispanic population and to the study of birth outcomes. Using data from the Fragile Families Study and the Millennium Cohort Study, we expand our...

While demographers have continued to document the notable family changes that have occurred in recent decades, the nature of family functioning across diverse family forms is less well understood. In particular, we know little about the level and quality of parental investment that children...

The literature on father involvement suggests that the value men ascribe to the father role is important for understanding their involvement with their children, yet this theory has received only limited empirical attention. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N =...

Though a great deal of prior research has examined the stability of cohabiting unions and child wellbeing in cohabiting unions, little research has attempted to integrate these two concepts. Using 4 waves of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, I examine the determinants of long-term...

To date, research on the linkages between paternal incarceration and family life has taken two forms. On the one hand, quantitative research tends to consider effects on child wellbeing and generally concludes paternal incarceration harms children. Qualitative research, on the other hand, tends...