IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/demogr/v57y2020i4d10.1007_s13524-020-00897-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Dynamics of U.S. Household Economic Circumstances Around a Birth

Author

Listed:
  • Alexandra B. Stanczyk

    (Mathematica)

Abstract

With the arrival of an infant, many households face increased demands on resources, changes in the composition of income, and a potentially heightened risk of income inadequacy. Changing household economic circumstances around a birth have implications for child and family well-being, women’s economic security, and public program design, yet have received little research attention in the United States. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this study provides new descriptive evidence of month-to-month changes in household income adequacy and the composition of household income in the year before and after a birth. Results show evidence of significant declines in household income adequacy in the months around a birth, particularly for single mothers who live without other adults. Income from public benefit programs buffers but does not eliminate declines in income adequacy. Results have implications for policies targeted at this period, including public benefit and parental leave programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexandra B. Stanczyk, 2020. "The Dynamics of U.S. Household Economic Circumstances Around a Birth," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(4), pages 1271-1296, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:demogr:v:57:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s13524-020-00897-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s13524-020-00897-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13524-020-00897-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s13524-020-00897-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sara LaLumia, 2013. "The EITC, Tax Refunds, and Unemployment Spells," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 188-221, May.
    2. Cáceres-Delpiano, Julio & Simonsen, Marianne, 2012. "The toll of fertility on mothers’ wellbeing," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 752-766.
    3. Mary Jo Bane & David T. Ellwood, 1986. "Slipping into and out of Poverty: The Dynamics of Spells," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 21(1), pages 1-23.
    4. Angrist, Joshua D & Evans, William N, 1998. "Children and Their Parents' Labor Supply: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 450-477, June.
    5. Daniel Feenberg & Elisabeth Coutts, 1993. "An introduction to the TAXSIM model," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 189-194.
    6. Wendy Sigle-Rushton & Sara McLanahan, 2002. "The Living Arrangements of New Unmarried Mothers," JCPR Working Papers 262, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    7. Lundberg, Shelly & Rose, Elaina, 2000. "Parenthood and the earnings of married men and women," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(6), pages 689-710, November.
    8. Jefferson, Philip N. (ed.), 2012. "The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Poverty," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195393781.
    9. Signe‐Mary McKernan & Caroline Ratcliffe, 2005. "Events that Trigger Poverty Entries and Exits," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 86(s1), pages 1146-1169, December.
    10. Sheela Kennedy & Catherine Fitch, 2012. "Measuring Cohabitation and Family Structure in the United States: Assessing the Impact of New Data From the Current Population Survey," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(4), pages 1479-1498, November.
    11. Wendy Sigle-Rushton & Sara McLanahan, 2002. "The living arrangements of new unmarried mothers," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 39(3), pages 415-433, August.
    12. Kurt Bauman, 1999. "Shifting family definitions: The effect of cohabitation and other nonfamily household relationships on measures of poverty," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 36(3), pages 315-325, August.
    13. Shelly J. Lundberg & Robert A. Pollak & Terence J. Wales, 1997. "Do Husbands and Wives Pool Their Resources? Evidence from the United Kingdom Child Benefit," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(3), pages 463-480.
    14. David E. Giles, 2011. "Interpreting Dummy Variables in Semi-logarithmic Regression Models: Exact Distributional Results," Econometrics Working Papers 1101, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    15. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2012. "Identifying the Disadvantaged: Official Poverty, Consumption Poverty, and the New Supplemental Poverty Measure," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 111-136, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maxim N. Massenkoff & Evan K. Rose, 2022. "Family Formation and Crime," NBER Working Papers 30385, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Jessica Pac & Lawrence M. Berger, 2024. "Quasi‐experimental evidence on the employment effects of the 2021 fully refundable monthly child tax credit," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(1), pages 192-213, January.
    3. Mónica L. Caudillo & Andrés Villarreal & Philip N. Cohen, 2022. "The Opioid Epidemic and Children’s Living Arrangements in the United States, 2000–2018," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 703(1), pages 162-187, September.
    4. Aljoscha Janssen & Elle Parslow, 2021. "Pregnancy persistently reduces alcohol purchases: Causal evidence from scanner data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 231-247, February.
    5. Pac, Jessica & Bartel, Ann & Ruhm, Christopher & Waldfogel, Jane, 2023. "Paid family leave and parental investments in infant health: Evidence from California," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Diana Worts & Amanda Sacker & Peggy McDonough, 2010. "Re-Assessing Poverty Dynamics and State Protections in Britain and the US: The Role of Measurement Error," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 419-438, July.
    2. Hope Harvey, 2020. "Cumulative Effects of Doubling Up in Childhood on Young Adult Outcomes," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(2), pages 501-528, April.
    3. Elira Kuka, 2020. "Quantifying the Benefits of Social Insurance: Unemployment Insurance and Health," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(3), pages 490-505, July.
    4. Bhalotra, Sonia & Clarke, Damian & Mühlrad, Hanna & Palme, Mårten, 2021. "Health and Labor Market Impacts of Twin Birth : Evidence from a Swedish IVF Policy Mandate," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1391, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    5. Cemal Eren Arbatlı & Quamrul H. Ashraf & Oded Galor & Marc Klemp, 2020. "Diversity and Conflict," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 727-797, March.
    6. Christian Neumeier & Todd Sørensen & Douglas Webber, 2018. "The Implicit Costs of Motherhood over the Lifecycle: Cross‐Cohort Evidence from Administrative Longitudinal Data," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(3), pages 716-733, January.
    7. Karsten Marshall Elseth Rieck & Kjetil Telle, 2012. "Sick leave before, during and after pregnancy," Discussion Papers 690, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    8. Bastian, Jacob E. & Black, Dan A., 2024. "Relaxing financial constraints with tax credits and migrating out of rural and distressed America," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    9. Bhalotra, Sonia R. & Umana-Aponte, Marcela, 2010. "The Dynamics of Women's Labour Supply in Developing Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 4879, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska, 2015. "She Cares and He Earns? The Family Gap in Poland," Ekonomia journal, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, vol. 42.
    11. Chigavazira, Abraham & Fisher, Hayley & Robinson, Tim & Zhu, Anna, 2019. "The Consequences of Extending Equitable Property Division Divorce Laws to Cohabitants," Working Papers 2019-02, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    12. Burkhauser, Richard V. & Corinth, Kevin & Elwell, James & Larrimore, Jeff, 2019. "Evaluating the Success of President Johnson's War on Poverty: Revisiting the Historical Record Using a Full-Income Poverty Measure," IZA Discussion Papers 12855, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Jon H Fiva & Max-Emil M King, 2024. "Child Penalties in Politics," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(658), pages 648-670.
    14. Kruk, Kai Eberhard & Reinhold, Steffen, 2014. "The effect of children on depression in old age," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 1-11.
    15. Lawrence Berger & Maria Cancian & Marcia J. Carlson & Daniel R. Meyer & Quentin Riser & Nora Cate Schaeffer, 2024. "Defining the ‘Resource Unit’ for Poverty Measurement in Complex Contemporary Households: It’s Complicated," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 43(2), pages 1-30, April.
    16. Bzostek, Sharon H. & Beck, Audrey N., 2011. "Familial instability and young children's physical health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 282-292, July.
    17. Catherine Pollak & Bernard Gazier, 2008. "L'apport des analyses longitudinales dans la connaissance des phénomènes de pauvreté et d'exclusion sociale : un survey de la littérature étrangère," Post-Print hal-00393322, HAL.
    18. Tabea Bucher-Koenen & Helmut Farbmacher & Raphael Guber & Johan Vikström, 2020. "Double Trouble: The Burden of Child-rearing and Working on Maternal Mortality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(2), pages 559-576, April.
    19. Chan, Kwok Ho & Fung, Ka Wai Terence, 2013. "The Effect of Social Fathers on the Cognitive Skills of Out-of-Wedlock Children," MPRA Paper 52875, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. James Raymo & Yanfei Zhou, 2012. "Living Arrangements and the Well-Being of Single Mothers in Japan," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 31(5), pages 727-749, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:demogr:v:57:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s13524-020-00897-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.