IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/jnr93_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Hidden Pain: Children Who Lost a Parent or Caregiver to COVID-19 and What the Nation Can Do to Help Them

Author

Listed:
  • Treglia, Dan
  • Cutuli, J. J.
  • Arasteh, Kamyar
  • Bridgeland, John
  • Edson, Gary
  • Phillips, Steven
  • Balakrishna, Anjali

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the single deadliest acute public health crisis in American history, and these deaths are a salient threat to the functioning of family and social networks. We assess counts and rates of parental and other in-home caregiver loss using death data published by the CDC and household composition data available through the American Community Survey's Public Use Microdata Sample. We find that, through mid-November 2021, more than 167,000 children under the age of 18 lost a parent or other in-home caregiver to COVID-19. Most of these children are under the age of 13 and, though this experience is universal across racial and ethnic groups, ages, and states, racial and ethnic disparities in caregiver loss exceed already high disparities in COVID-19 deaths. We summarize literature on the impacts of parental loss and, after reviewing potential interventions for these children, offer recommendations to policymakers and practitioners.

Suggested Citation

  • Treglia, Dan & Cutuli, J. J. & Arasteh, Kamyar & Bridgeland, John & Edson, Gary & Phillips, Steven & Balakrishna, Anjali, 2021. "Hidden Pain: Children Who Lost a Parent or Caregiver to COVID-19 and What the Nation Can Do to Help Them," SocArXiv jnr93_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:jnr93_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/jnr93_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/61d5c1cece4dbc119cc744d7/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/jnr93_v1?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce D. Meyer & Angela Wyse & Alexa Grunwaldt & Carla Medalia & Derek Wu, 2021. "Learning about Homelessness Using Linked Survey and Administrative Data," NBER Working Papers 28861, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Ashton M. Verdery & Emily Smith-Greenaway & Rachel Margolis & Jonathan Daw, 2020. "Tracking the reach of COVID-19 kin loss with a bereavement multiplier applied to the United States," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 117(30), pages 17695-17701, July.
    3. Zachary Parolin & Sophie Collyer & Megan Curran & Christoper Wimer, 2021. "Monthly Poverty Rates among Children after the Expansion of the Child Tax Credit," Poverty and Social Policy Brief 20412, Center on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University.
    4. Ann Elizabeth Montgomery, 2021. "Understanding the Dynamics of Homelessness among Veterans Receiving Outpatient Care: Lessons Learned from Universal Screening," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 693(1), pages 230-243, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Zachary Parolin & Sophie Collyer & Megan Curran, 2022. "Absence of Monthly Child Tax Credit Leads to 3.7 Million More Children in Poverty in January 2022," Poverty and Social Policy Brief 20417, Center on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University.
    2. Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, 2021. "The demographic drivers of grief and memory after genocide in Guatemala," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2021-003, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    3. Nayga, Jr., Rodolfo M. & Valizadeh, Pourya & Melo, Grace, 2022. "SNAP and well-being of low-income households with children before and during the pandemic," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322184, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Jonah P. DeChants & Myeshia N. Price & Ronita Nath & Carrie K. Davis, 2023. "Losing a Close Friend or Family Member Due to COVID-19 and Mental Health among LGBTQ Youth," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(12), pages 1-10, June.
    5. Diego Alburez‐Gutierrez & Carl Mason & Emilio Zagheni, 2021. "The “Sandwich Generation” Revisited: Global Demographic Drivers of Care Time Demands," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 47(4), pages 997-1023, December.
    6. Thyden, Naomi Harada & Slaughter-Acey, Jaime & Widome, Rachel & Warren, John Robert & Osypuk, Theresa L., 2023. "Family deaths in the early life course and their association with later educational attainment in a longitudinal cohort study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    7. R. S. Zaharna, 2022. "The pandemic’s wake-up call for humanity-centered public diplomacy," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(1), pages 4-7, March.
    8. Zachary Parolin & Sophie Collyer & Megan Curran, 2021. "Sixth Child Tax Credit Payment Kept 3.7 Million Children Out of Poverty in December," Poverty and Social Policy Brief 20416, Center on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University.
    9. Elior Cohen, 2022. "The Effect of Housing First Programs on Future Homelessness and Socioeconomic Outcomes," Research Working Paper RWP 2022-03, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    10. Goodwill, Janelle R. & Fike, Kayla J., 2023. "Black in the pandemic: Comparing experiences of mistrust, anxiety, and the COVID-19 vaccine among Black adults in the U.S," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 338(C).
    11. Sha Jiang & Shripad Tuljapurkar & Hal Caswell & Zhen Guo & Wenyun Zuo, 2023. "How does the demographic transition affect kinship networks?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 48(32), pages 899-930.
    12. Toni P. Miles & Changle Li & M. Mahmud Khan & Rana Bayakly & Deborah Carr, 2023. "Estimating Prevalence of Bereavement, Its Contribution to Risk for Binge Drinking, and Other High-Risk Health States in a State Population Survey, 2019 Georgia Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Surv," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(10), pages 1-15, May.
    13. Downes, Henry & Phillips, David C. & Sullivan, James X., 2022. "The effect of emergency financial assistance on healthcare use," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    14. Zachary Parolin & Elizabeth Ananat & Sophie M. Collyer & Megan Curran & Christopher Wimer, 2021. "The Initial Effects of the Expanded Child Tax Credit on Material Hardship," NBER Working Papers 29285, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Jeehoon Han & Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2022. "Real-Time Poverty, Material Well-Being, and the Child Tax Credit," National Tax Journal, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(4), pages 817-846.
    16. Adam Bee & Joshua Mitchell & Nikolas Mittag & Jonathan Rothbaum & Carl Sanders & Lawrence Schmidt & Matthew Unrath, 2023. "National Experimental Wellbeing Statistics - Version 1," Working Papers 23-04, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    17. Sheely, Amanda, 2022. "More than money? Job quality and food insecurity among employed lone mother households in the United States," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112504, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Renzhihui Tang & Tong Xie & Keyuan Jiao & Xin Xu & Xinyan Zou & Wenli Qian & Jianping Wang, 2021. "Grief Reactions and Grief Counseling among Bereaved Chinese Individuals during COVID-19 Pandemic: Study Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial Combined with a Longitudinal Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(17), pages 1-12, August.
    19. Nathaniel Geiger & Anagha Gore & Claire V. Squire & Shahzeen Z. Attari, 2021. "Investigating similarities and differences in individual reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 167(1), pages 1-20, July.
    20. Łuczywek, Beata & Lippold, Kye & Betts, Julian & Berman, Eli, 2024. "Boosting Take-Up of the Expanded Child Tax Credit through School-Based Outreach," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt1dh1n103, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:osf:socarx:jnr93_v1. 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: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    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.