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Necessary Reductions or Increased Support? Parental Investments in Children During the Great Recession

In this article, we examine the impact of one such event - the Great Recession of the late 2000s - on one potential mechanism of transmission: parents' financial investments in children. Because parents at different points in the income distribution have different resources, they may make different decisions or have different abilities to respond to times of economic hardship and uncertainty.

The Great Recession and Married Parents' Use of Time

This paper describes the time spent by married fathers and mothers in home production and child-care over the period 2003-2011 in the American Time Use Survey (n = 37,228). The recession increased the likelihood that fathers participated in both home production and childcare. However, it decreased the amount of fathers’ time in home production among participants. This had the overall effect of lowering the amount of fathers’ time in home production in the recession by about 35 minutes per week.

The Great Recession and Mother's Health

We investigate the impacts of the Great Recession on the health of women with children using the last two waves of the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study. We model the financial crisis with changes in the state unemployment rate and we focus on a wide range of physical and mental health outcomes, as well as health behaviors. Our findings from the individual fixed effects models suggest heterogeneous impacts across demographic and socioeconomic groups.

Wealth Levels, Wealth Inequality, and the Great Recession

This research brief assesses two questions about the extent to which the Great Recession altered the level and distribution of wealth through 2013--the most recent year of data available on wealth held by American families. 1. By how much did wealth levels decline during the Great Recession, and by how much did they recover through 2013? 2. Did wealth inequality increase, decrease, or remain steady during the Great Recession?

Intimate Partner Violence in the Great Recession

In the United States, the Great Recession has been marked by severe negative shocks to labor market conditions. In this study, we combine longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study with Bureau of Labor Statistics data on local area unemployment rates to examine the relationship between adverse labor market conditions and intimate partner violence between 1999 and 2010. We find that rapidly worsening labor market conditions are associated with increases in the prevalence of violent/controlling behavior in marriage.

Less Than Equal: Racial Disparities in Wealth Accumulation

When it comes to economic gaps between whites and communities of color in the United States, income inequality tells part of the story. But let's not forget about wealth. Wealth isn't just money in the bank, it's insurance against tough times, tuition to get a better education and a better job, savings to retire on, and a springboard into the middle class. In short, wealth translates into opportunity.

Lost Generations? Wealth Among Young Americans

Despite the Great Recession and the fragile economic recovery, the wealth of Americans has grown significantly when a longer-term view is considered. Average household wealth approximately doubled from 1983 to 2010, and average incomes rose similarly. For many, the American dream of working hard, saving more, and becoming wealthier than one's parents holds true.

The Great Recession and State Criminal Justice Policy: Do Economic Hard Times Matter?

It costs a lot to maintain the world's highest incarceration rate. Did the largest economic shock since the Great Depression influence criminal justice policy and resulting incarcerations?

The Effect of Early Childhood Poverty

Almost universally neglected in the poverty scholarship is the timing of economic hardship across childhood and adolescence. Emerging research in neuroscience, social epidemiology and developmental psychology suggests that poverty early in a child's life may be particularly harmful. 

The Great Recession and Mothers' Health

Given the now well known effects of the Great Recession on economic outcomes of individuals and families, researchers have turned to the question of how this major economic downturn affected domains of family life. In a recent paper, Janet Currie of Princeton University and Valentina Duque and Irwin Garfinkel of Columbia University study the health of young mothers in the context of the Great Recession. Two key findings emerged. First, increased unemployment was associated with worsened self-reported health status and increased smoking and drug use.

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