Working Paper: NBER ID: w17135
Authors: Liana E. Fox; Wenjui Han; Christopher Ruhm; Jane Waldfogel
Abstract: Utilizing data from the 1967-2009 years of the March Current Population Surveys, we examine two important resources for children's well-being: time and money. We document trends in parental employment, from the perspective of children, and show what underlies these trends. We find that increases in family work hours mainly reflect movements into jobs by parents who, in prior decades, would have remained at home. This increase in market work has raised incomes for children in the typical two-parent family but not for those in lone-parent households. Time use data from 1975 and 2003-2008 reveal that working parents spend less time engaged in primary childcare than their counterparts without jobs but more than employed peers in previous cohorts. Analysis of 2004 work schedule data suggests that non-daytime work provides an alternative method of coordinating employment schedules for some dual-earner families.
Keywords: Parental Employment; Child Wellbeing; Time Use; Income Trends
JEL Codes: J13; J22; J38
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| increased parental employment (J22) | children's income (J13) |
| increased parental employment (J22) | time spent in primary childcare (J22) |
| increased parental employment (J22) | children's wellbeing (I31) |
| movement into jobs by parents (J62) | increased parental employment (J22) |
| increased parental employment in two-parent families (J12) | raised incomes for children (J13) |
| increased parental employment in lone-parent households (J12) | no change in incomes for children (I24) |
| working parents (J22) | less time in primary childcare (J22) |
| employed parents (J22) | more engagement in childcare than previous cohorts (J13) |
| non-daytime work schedules (J22) | mitigate time constraints for dual-earner families (J29) |