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Title: Nonstandard Work Schedules and Child Cognitive and Behavioral Outcomes
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Han, Wen-Jui |
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Nonstandard Work Schedules and Child Cognitive and Behavioral Outcomes Presented: Atlanta, GA, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Research Conference, October 2004 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Keyword(s): Age at Birth; Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Children, Academic Development; Cognitive Ability; Cognitive Development; Maternal Employment; Mothers, Education; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Shift Workers; Welfare; Work Hours/Schedule Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Over the past three decades, scholar Harriet Presser has documented the increasing number of people working at hours that are not between 6 am and 6 pm (e.g., they work at nonstandard schedules that are either evenings, nights, or rotating shifts). Numerous empirical studies have acknowledged the potential negative effects of working nonstandard hours on adults, psychological, physical, and sociological well-being. Such adverse impacts on individual wellbeing raise concerns about the potential impact - directly or indirectly - of mothers' nonstandard work schedules on their children's wellbeing. As of today, however, we still know very little about the relationship between parental nonstandard work schedules and child development. This paper examines the association between maternal nonstandard work schedules and child cognitive and behavioral outcomes using a contemporary national data set - National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement (NLSY-CS) - with 1,625 children who were born between 1982 and 1991 and were followed longitudinally from birth to age nine or ten and for whom assessment data are available. Particular attention is also paid to various subgroups of children (i.e., in different racial/ethnic groups, in single-mother families, in families ever received welfare, and fathers not working).The NLSY79-CS is well suited for this analysis because, in addition to collecting information on family demographic background, it also contains detailed information on maternal work schedules at every assessment point. The cognitive outcomes analyzed in this paper include Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) at age 3 or 4, and Peabody Individual Achievement Tests (PIATs) on Math and Reading Recognition at age 5 or 6, at age 7 or 8, and at age 9 or 10. The Behavioral Problems Index (BPI) is used to measure the behavioral outcome. Additionally, to account for selection bias in estimating the effects of maternal employment, an extensive set of child, mother, and family characteristics are controlled for in the model: whether the child is male; whether the child has any older siblings; mother's cognitive capability (measured by Armed Force Qualification Test; AFQT); mother's age at birth; mother's education at birth; mother's marital status at birth; years living in a single-parent family; family income in the year before birth; and whether the family was ever in poverty up until the assessment year. The results reported will fill gaps in knowledge about child development in the context of maternal work, and the knowledge thus gained should prove useful in shaping policy responses. |
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Bibliography Citation
Han, Wen-Jui. "Nonstandard Work Schedules and Child Cognitive and Behavioral Outcomes." Presented: Atlanta, GA, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Research Conference, October 2004. |