Short-Run Effects of Parental Job Loss on Child Health

Abstract

Recent research suggests that parental job loss has negative effects on children's outcomes, including their academic achievement and long-run educational and labor market outcomes. In this paper we turn our attention to the effects of parental job loss on children's health. We combine health data from 16 waves of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which allows us to use a fixed effects specification and still have a large sample of parental job displacements. We find that paternal job loss is detrimental to the physical and mental health of children in low-socioeconomic status (SES) families, increasing their incidence of injuries and mental disorders. We separately find that maternal job loss leads to reductions in the incidence of infectious illness among children in high-SES families, possibly resulting from substitution of maternal care for market-based childcare services. Increases in public health insurance coverage compensate for a large share of the loss in private coverage that follows parental displacement, and we find no significant changes in routine or diagnostic medical care.

The Effects of Aggregate and Gender-Specific Labor Demand Shocks on Child Health

“…Notably, these findings contrast both with the literature on changes in adult health over the business cycle, which has generally shown that increased unemployment rates are associated with improvements in adult health, and with the literature on the relationship between unemployment rates and infant health, which has found that economic downturns are associated with reductions in infant mortality and the incidence of low birthweight. On the other hand, they are consistent with recent work looking at the direct effects of parental job displacement on child health: Schaller and Zerpa (2015) find that paternal job loss is associated with worse mental health among children and leads to increases in injuries among children in low-socioeconomic status families.…”

“…Our results echo those of recent studies that document differential impacts of individual maternal and paternal job loss on children's health and achievement (Schaller and Zerpa, 2015;Liu and Zhao, 2011;Kalil and Ziol-Guest, 2008). Our analyses differ from the previous research, however, because we focus on the impact of aggregate demand conditions, rather than individual job loss.…”

“…When considered together with the literature on maternal employment, this finding suggests that mothers and fathers may influence the production of children's health very differently. Recent studies that consider the impacts of both mothers' and fathers' job losses or unemployment provide further evidence in this regard: Schaller and Zerpa (2015) find that maternal job loss is associated with reductions in the incidence of acute infectious conditions, while paternal job loss is associated with worse mental health among children. Liu and Zhao (2011) examine the impacts of job displacement in China and find that while mother's job loss has no effect on children's height and weight, father's job loss has a negative impact.…”

Risk of hypertension in school-aged children with different parental risk: A longitudinal study from childhood to young adulthood

“…In the current study regarding socio-demographic characteristics of parents, only employment status in fathers and age in both parents played important roles, a result consistent with previous data, suggesting the in uential effect of family socioeconomic status (SES) de ned as parental employment and family income on children's general health and risk of CVD development in adulthood [34][35][36]. Accordingly, previous ndings in Iran showed that moderate and low familial economic status could increase the incidence of HTN in school-aged children [18].…”

The Impact of Stock Market Fluctuations on the Mental and Physical Well‐being of Children

“…While the job loss literature suggests that there is a negative effect on health for job displacement (Sullivan and Von Wachter 2009), we show there is an intensive margin change in hours worked in addition to a change in employment. Further, it is not as clear that the negative health effects of job displacement hold for children: Schaller and Zerpa (2015) find that while paternal job loss is bad for child health, maternal job loss actually decreases incidences of infectious disease among children.…”