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Source: Workshop on Labour Force Participation and Economic Growth
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Ruhm, Christopher J. |
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Maternal Employment and Adolescent Development Presented: Wellington, New Zealand, Workshop on Labour Force Participation and Economic Growth, April 2005. Also: http://www.treasury.govt.nz/lfpw/papers/lfpw-ruhm.pdf Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: New Zealand, The Treasury Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Behavioral Problems; Maternal Employment; Obesity; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Substance Use; Weight Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. This paper analyses how maternal employment affects the development of 10 and 11 year olds using data from multiple years of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The dependent variables include three high quality assessments of cognitive skill, two indicators of socioemotional development and two measures of excess body weight. The results suggest sharply disparate impacts across categories of youths. Moderate amounts of work by mothers have no effect or benefit children who are "disadvantaged" based on race/ethnicity, low maternal education, absence of a male adult in the household at birth or using a multivariate index of low socioeconomic status (SES) described below. Even long employment hours, which occur relatively rarely, are unlikely to leave them much worse off than if their mothers did not engage in market work. By contrast, harmful consequences are predicted for "advantaged" adolescents, with negative effects extending to even limited employment. Particularly striking are the reductions in cognitive test scores and increases in excess body weight anticipated for high SES youths whose mothers work. There is also evidence of relatively large (in percentage terms) increases in early substance use and small reductions in behaviour problems; however, these are never statistically significant. |
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Bibliography Citation
Ruhm, Christopher J. "Maternal Employment and Adolescent Development." Presented: Wellington, New Zealand, Workshop on Labour Force Participation and Economic Growth, April 2005. |