Working Paper: NBER ID: w22394
Authors: Marianne Page; Jessamyn Schaller; David Simon
Abstract: In this paper, we estimate the relationship between cyclical changes in aggregate labor market opportunities and child health outcomes. In addition to using state unemployment rates to proxy for labor market conditions, as is common in the existing literature, we construct predicted employment growth indices that allow us to separately identify demand-induced changes in labor market opportunities for fathers and mothers. In contrast with prominent studies of adult health, we find no evidence that negative shocks to general economic conditions are associated with improvements in contemporaneous measures of children’s health. We do find, however, that focusing on gender-inclusive economic variables obscures the extent to which the labor market affects children. Specifically, we find evidence that improvements in labor market conditions facing women are associated with worse child health, while improvements in men’s labor market conditions have smaller positive effects on child health. These patterns, which are consistent with previous findings on the effects of individual parental employment and job displacement, suggest that family income and maternal time use are both important mechanisms mediating the effects of aggregate labor market conditions on child health.
Keywords: Child Health; Labor Market; Employment Shocks
JEL Codes: I1; J0; J23
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Predicted employment growth for females (J21) | Likelihood of a child experiencing severe emotional difficulties (J12) |
| Predicted employment growth for males (J21) | Probability of a child having an asthma attack (C83) |
| Improvements in labor market conditions for women (J49) | Worse child health outcomes (I14) |
| Improvements in labor market conditions for men (J49) | Better child health outcomes (I14) |