Mothers' Work and Children's Lives: Low-Income Families after Welfare Reform

3 - The Effect of Low-Income Mothers' Employment on Children

51 3 The Effect of Low-Income Mothers’ Employment on Children Before presenting the results of our analysis, we first examine the simple two-way relationships between maternal employment patterns and the child behavior outcomes in which we are interested. Table 3.1 presents simple descriptive statistics for each of our child behavioral outcomes (in standard deviation units) broken down by the intensity of mother’s work per week (full time vs. part time), regularity of work schedule, and type of job transition pattern experienced over the past one to two years (job stability, instability, mobility). Similarly, Table 3.2 presents the average longer-run child outcomes at the end of the survey by the mother’s work experience profile over the entire study, defined along the dimensions of job quality, employment stability, and regularity of work hours (low profile, medium profile, high profile). Children whose mothers worked full time experienced more externalizing behavior problems and were more likely to be disruptive in school relative to children whose mothers worked part time. Relative to children whose mothers worked a predictable set of hours or whose jobs were stable, those whose mothers either had fluctuating hours or experienced job instability had significantly more behavior problems overall, greater externalizing and internalizing problems, and were more likely to have school absenteeism problems. Over the longer run (Table 3.2), children whose mothers experienced the low-profile work trajectory over the period had behavior problems at the end of the survey that were roughly two-thirds of a standard deviation higher than the levels of behavior problems observed among children whose mothers experienced the high-profile work trajectory. Furthermore, 35 percent of children whose mothers experienced the low-profile work trajectory had repeated a grade by the end of the study, compared with 19 and 26 percent among children whose mothers experienced the high- and mediumprofile work trajectories, respectively. 52 Table 3.1 Children’s outcomes Classified by Mothers’ Recent Employment histories, WES 1997–2003 Mother’s employment patterns(t−1,t) Child outcome No work Part-time job Full-time job Fluctuating work hours Regular work hours Job stability Job instability Job mobility BPI—total score (in STD units) 0.13 −0.03 −0.01 0.20** −0.09 −0.24*** 0.19 −0.15 BPI—externalizing (in STD units) 0.08 −0.09* 0.03 0.13** −0.06 −0.23*** 0.16 −0.06 BPI—internalizing (in STD units) 0.18 −0.07 −0.01 0.10** −0.08 −0.17*** 0.33 −0.05 Disruptive in school 0.28 0.33* 0.37 0.34 0.36 0.36*** 0.41 0.36 School absenteeism problem 0.22 0.19 0.19 0.22** 0.19 0.15*** 0.24 0.16 NOTE: The sample consists of all WES target children, where information was collected during 5 waves of interviews with mothers between 1997 and 2004. The behavioral problem indices are expressed in standard deviation units as deviations from their respective means. *indicates difference in mean of child outcome between part-time and full-time work is significant at the 10 percent level; **indicates difference in mean of child outcome between regular and fluctuating hours is significant at the 10 percent level; ***indicates difference in mean of child outcome between job stability and job instability is significant at the 10 percent level. 53 Table 3.2 Longer-Run Child outcomes at End of Study Classified by Mothers’ Work Experience Profiles, 1997–2003 All child outcomes measured at wave 5 BPI (in STD units) Externalizing (in STD units) Internalizing (in STD units) Disruptive in school (proportion) School absenteeism (proportion) Ever repeated grade (proportion) Placed in special education (proportion) Low profile (25%) 0.37* 0.34* 0.36* 0.46 0.26* 0.35* 0.20 Medium profile (50%) −0.05 −0.03 0.00 0.41 0.24 0.26 0.20 High profile (25%) −0.29 −0.28 −0.34 0.42 0.15 0.19 0.19 NOTE: *indicates difference in mean of child outcome between low profile and high profile is significant at the 5 percent level. Low profile is defined as not employed in “good” job by wave 5 and had experienced chronic job instability and/or fluctuating work hours for the vast majority of study period (i.e., either had been fired/laid off two or more times, had experienced four or more voluntary...