Asset-based economic empowerment interventions, which take an integrated approach to building human, social, and economic capital, have shown promise in their ability to reduce HIV risk for young people, including adolescent girls, in sub-Saharan Africa. Similarly, community and family strengthening interventions have proven beneficial in addressing mental health and behavioral challenges of adolescents transitioning to adulthood. Yet, few programs aimed at addressing sexual risk have applied combination interventions to address economic stability and mental health within the traditional framework of health education and HIV counseling/testing. This paper describes a study protocol for a 5-year, NIMH-funded, cluster randomized-controlled trial to evaluate a combination intervention aimed at reducing HIV risk among adolescent girls in Uganda. The intervention, titled Suubi4Her, combines savings-led economic empowerment through youth development accounts (YDA) with an innovative family strengthening component delivered via Multiple Family Groups (MFG).

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES:Father loss during childhood has negative health and behavioral consequences, but the biological consequences are unknown. Our goal was to examine how father loss (because of separation and/or divorce, death, or incarceration) is associated with cellular function as estimated by telomere length.METHODS:Data come from the 9-year follow-up of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort study of children in 20 large American cities (N = 2420). Principal measures are as follows: salivary telomere length (sTL), mother reports of father loss, and polymorphisms in genes related to serotonergic and dopaminergic signaling.RESULTS:At 9 years of age, children with father loss have significantly shorter telomeres (14% reduction). Paternal death has the largest association (16%), followed by incarceration (10%), and separation and/or divorce (6%). Changes in income partially mediate these associations (95% mediation for separation and/or divorce, 30% for incarceration, and 25% for death). Effects are 40% greater for boys and 90% greater for children with the most reactive alleles of the serotonin transporter genes when compared with those with the least reactive alleles. No differences were found by age at father loss or a child's race/ethnicity.CONCLUSIONS:Father loss has a significant association with children's sTL, with the death of a father showing the largest effect. Income loss explains most of the association between child sTL and separation and/or divorce but much less of the association with incarceration or death. This underscores the important role of fathers in the care and development of children and supplements evidence of the strong negative effects of parental incarceration.

This paper examines the association between poverty and food insecurity among children, using two different definitions of poverty – the official poverty measure (OPM) and the new supplemental poverty measure (SPM) of the Census Bureau, which is based on a more inclusive definition of family resources and needs. Our analysis is based on data from the 2001–2011 Current Population Survey and shows that food insecurity and very low food security among children decline as income-to-needs ratio increases. The point estimates show that the associations are stronger as measured by the new supplemental measure of income-to-needs ratio than when estimated through the official measure. Statistical tests reject the hypothesis that poor households' odds of experiencing low food security are the same whether the SPM or OPM measure is used; but the tests do not reject the hypothesis when very low food security is the outcome.

Low-income families rely on various sources of support, both public and private, to make ends meet. Although doubling up (moving in with relatives or nonkin) is common source of support, previous research has not examined the economic value of doubling up as part of family's income packaging strategy. Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study, we examine doubling up as source of private support a private safety among families with young children. We find that doubling up is very important private safety net in the first few years of child's life, especially for single and cohabiting mothers. Although high rates of unemployment (and other macro-economic indicators) are associated with increased odds of doubling up, the effect is small, indicating that this particular private safety net is not an effective coping mechanism for families during severe economic downturns.

Researchers and policymakers have long been concerned that government policies may influence individual behavior in unintended ways. In particular, they worry that by providing mothers with an income that is independent of marriage, welfare and child support policies may discourage marriage and increase union dissolution. Economic theory is clear with respect to the marriage disincentives of welfare for single mothers (Becker 1981), but it is ambiguous with respect to the potential effects of child support policies on marriage. Whereas stronger child support enforcement reduces the costs of single motherhood for women, making marriage less attractive, it increases the costs for fathers, making marriage more attractive. Which effect dominates is an empirical question. Although empirical studies vary with respect to effect size and methods, the evidence compiled during the 1980s and early 1990s indicates that welfare generosity during this period had a small negative effect on marriage among mothers (Moffitt 1998), whereas stronger child support enforcement reduced single motherhood by reducing nonmarital childbearing (Aizer and McLanahan 2006; Case 1998; see Nixon 1997 for different findings; Plotnick et al. 2004), though few researchers have pulled apart the decisions to give birth and to marry given a nonmarital conception.

In 1996 the U.S. Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), substantially reducing a family?s rights to income support. PRWORA removed the entitlement to government-provided cash assistance and increased states? incentives to reduce welfare caseloads. At the same time it increased private responsibilities by encouraging greater work effort from mothers and more child support payments from non-resident fathers. The PRWORA provisions raised concerns within the medical community and among other advocates interested in the health and wellbeing of at-risk families. The changes to cash welfare and child support policies had potential direct and indirect consequences for women?s health. Most directly, by removing the entitlement to welfare, many feared that poor women would lose their health insurance coverage. While PRWORA included a provision to hold Medicaid eligibility constant, the administrative barriers to implementation by program staff and the confusing new rules suggested that many eligible women might lose coverage.

This study provides the first set of empirical evidence on the determinants of social benefits received by urban families in China and the impact on income inequality using the China Household Income Project (CHIP) 1988 and 2002 data. It finds that the total urban social benefits strongly targeted the bottom pre-tax pre-transfer income decile. Cash transfers were negatively associated with income distribution in both years, while important in-kind benefits (namely health and food in 1988 and education in 2002) were positively related to income levels. The presence of elder members and higher education levels were significantly related to more total social benefits. Urban social benefits played a significant role in reducing income inequality in both 1988 and 2002. However, the social benefit transfers were not able to close the increasing income gap caused by the growing market income inequality of the period. As a result, post-tax post-transfer income inequality level in 2002 was higher still than in 1988.