Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress authorized states to implement optional Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) operational waivers that reduced administrative burdens. This study focuses on a waiver that extended households' certification periods, allowing many participants to continue receiving SNAP benefits without completing routine recertification reporting requirements. We examine how SNAP participation changed when states terminated this waiver and reinstated compliance requirements. Using monthly SNAP participation data from 17 states that consistently implemented the waiver and a staggered difference-in-differences design, our key independent variable is the state-by-month timing of waiver termination, which varied across states. Results provide quasi-experimental evidence that waiver termination led to statistically significant declines in SNAP participation. Effects emerged soon after termination and grew over subsequent months, consistent with cumulative disenrollment as more households reached recertification windows. Across specifications, termination is associated with an approximately 2-4% relative reduction in SNAP participation. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest this corresponds to thousands of individuals per state exiting SNAP in the year following waiver termination. Because the policy changes primarily reinstated administrative requirements rather than eligibility rules, some of these exits likely reflect administrative churn ("hidden cutoffs") among households that may remain eligible but fail to recertify.

Fragmentation across early care and education (ECE) systems in the United States obscures how many children access services and how these experiences shape school readiness. This study leverages Iowa's Integrated Data System for Decision-Making (I2D2), which links health, social determinants of health (SDOH), and education records, to provide one of the first unduplicated counts of ECE participation statewide. Drawing on a matched cohort of 27,321 children eligible for kindergarten in 2017--2018, we examine three aims: (1) describe patterns of centre-based ECE participation; (2) assess associations between child/family characteristics and participation; and (3) evaluate links between ECE and kindergarten suspensions and attendance. Results indicate that 73\% of children participated in at least one ECE program prior to school entry, with substantial overlap across public and private preschool, and subsidised or unsubsidised child care. ECE participation varied as a function of poverty, race/ethnicity, maternal education, and cumulative early-life risks. ECE participation was associated with better kindergarten attendance but not suspension. Findings underscore both the promise of integrated data for advancing equity-driven research and the need for policies that target families with the greatest barriers to ECE access.

Joint physical custody (JPC) is an increasingly common care arrangement in which children live about equally with their parents after separation or divorce. This study examined the association between JPC and mothers' life satisfaction in Belgium, Finland, and Germany. The objective was to determine whether mothers with (asymmetric or symmetric) JPC differed in terms of life satisfaction from mothers with sole physical custody (SPC) and whether there were country-specific differences. Using data from the studies Divorce in Flanders, Survey among Separated Families in Finland, and Family Models in Germany, we estimated OLS regression models for resident mothers in SPC and JPC families with minor children. Results showed significant differences between countries. Mothers in Belgium did not differ in terms of life satisfaction depending on their child's physical custody arrangement. However, mothers with symmetric JPC had higher life satisfaction than their counterparts with SPC in the Finnish sample, while both asymmetric and symmetric JPC mothers reported higher life satisfaction than SPC mothers in Germany. These differences, however, disappeared after introducing control variables to the regression models. Findings suggest that selection into different physical custody arrangements may explain the positive link between JPC and mothers' life satisfaction; a finding with far-reaching implications.

This study examines the effects of joint physical custody (JPC) on the physical and mental health of children following divorce, using comprehensive survey data from Wisconsin. Informed by Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological model, the study seeks to understand the impact of custody arrangements on children’s health outcomes post-divorce. Prior research has suggested potential benefits of JPC, but there is a need for more robust analysis to control for selection biases and other confounding factors. The analytic sample is constructed to facilitate comparisons between mothers with shared versus sole placement. The parents in the Wisconsin data are included in the analytic sample based on survey measures reflecting the focal child’s actual placement arrangement at the time of the survey. The final data include 374 parents consisting of 170 sole-placement mothers and 204 shared placement mothers. This study employs robust probit regression models and Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) to account for selection biases. Descriptive statistics and multivariate models are used to analyze survey data collected from Wisconsin. The analytic approach ensures methodological rigor by adjusting for potential confounders and providing a more accurate estimate of the relationships under investigation. The findings reveal that children in JPC arrangements exhibit significantly better mental health outcomes compared to those in sole custody. Specifically, 79.8

This study analyzes the associations between post-separation child living arrangements and child support outcomes and expense sharing in two contrasting welfare states: Finland and the United States (Wisconsin). The extent to which parents share the economic responsibility of the child after separation varies across countries. As shared care arrangements become more prevalent, traditional child support arrangements may become less common. Survey data collected in Finland (2019) and Wisconsin (2020) from separated or divorced parents are utilized in this study, and standard logistic and ols regression models are used to investigate the relationship between sole and shared care arrangements and child support outcomes and expense sharing. The findings demonstrate that shared care arrangements are associated with a reduced likelihood of having a formal child support order and an increased likelihood of sharing child-related expenses in Finland and Wisconsin. Thus, shared care arrangements are linked to a decrease in formal child support orders and an increase in expense sharing. The results indicate a reduced reliance on formal child support orders and an increased willingness to privately share child-related expenses; findings reflect changing societal practices regarding the economic aspects of child rearing in separated or divorced families.

Objective and BackgroundPrevious research shows the benefits of formal child support to children during their childhood; however, the long-term effect of child support receipt on outcomes as adults has not been studied. This inquiry examines whether adults who received formal child support as children have different labor market outcomes than those who did not.MethodWe conducted two sets of analyses with complementary strengths to examine young adults' earnings and employment status. Our primary method exploited experimental variation in child support receipt among welfare participants, as part of the Wisconsin Child Support Demonstration Evaluation; the secondary analyses used propensity score matching to construct statistically equivalent comparison groups drawn from a broader population included in Wisconsin Court Record Data.ResultsAcross both studies, we found the receipt of child support was associated with a substantive and statistically significant increase in adult earnings; results for employment status were mixed.ConclusionFindings suggest that formal child support may disrupt patterns of intergenerational disadvantage, reducing the economic vulnerability of children living with resident mothers, and then improving those children's earnings as adults. In addition to contributing to our understanding of the relationship between childhood economic status and adult outcomes, the findings provide critical new information to policymakers assessing family policy.

Determining whether a household is ‘in poverty,’ requires identifying a resource unit, typically consisting of individuals who both co-reside and pool resources. High levels of family complexity and fluidity in living arrangements among contemporary American families, particularly those that include children, have complicated this task. We leverage novel survey data from Wisconsin to examine the implications of a range of alternative criteria for identifying the resource unit used to measure poverty. We further consider the extent to which unit members, under alternative criteria, exchange food-related resources both within and outside of the unit. Our results reveal inconsistencies between alternative measures of the resource unit and those used to define the resource unit for the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) and Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) in the United States, and we find that the SPM unit is generally more consistent than the OPM unit with alternative measures of the resource unit. In addition, we find substantial levels of food resource exchanges among adults who are both inside and outside the resource unit. Together, these findings demonstrate the challenge of appropriately defining the resource unit for measuring poverty and suggest that both the OPM and SPM may not fully account for the availability, amount, or composition of resources for many households.

The present study examined the social-emotional development items assessed by kindergarten teachers in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort to determine the optimal factor structure underlying the items as well as the reliability and validity of the resulting factors. This study identified an empirically derived factor structure for teacher-reported social development, investigated whether there was evidence of bias in teacher assessments of social-emotional constructs, examined factor invariance across demographic characteristics (i.e., race and ethnicity, sex, and poverty status), and examined the external validity of the derived factors by determining the extent to which they were associated with well-established measures of early childhood competencies. Findings suggested a 4-factor solution was optimal, consisting of (a) Interpersonal Skills, (b) Externalizing Behavior, (c) Approaches to Learning, and (d) Perspective Taking. Findings offer suggestive evidence of teacher biases in assessments and some, although not conclusive, support for the invariance of social-emotional dimension across demographic characteristics. Results provide a useful next step toward documenting reliable and valid social-emotional measures for use in early childhood research and challenges users of national datasets to think critically about the use of “scales” without a priori attention to important psychometric properties.

Children’s post-separation living arrangements may have important implications for mothers’ economic wellbeing. This study examines self-reported economic wellbeing of mothers with shared versus sole physical custody (also known as shared care) of the child six or more years since separation, using unique survey data on separated parents in Finland (n = 850) and Wisconsin, US (n = 395) in 2019–2020. We use sequential logistic regression models to examine the pathways through which this association potentially occurs—child support and sharing of children’s expenses between parents—and whether the outcomes differ by the family policy contexts of Finland and Wisconsin. Our findings suggest that Wisconsin mothers in shared versus sole physical custody arrangements have significantly lower levels of economic hardship, that are fully explained by greater cost-sharing with the other parent of the child. No such relationship is evident in Finland, although cost-sharing is independently negatively associated with economic hardship of Finnish mothers. Findings highlight how fathers’ contributions as tied to children’s living arrangements matter for post-separation economic wellbeing of mothers, and have implications for shared physical custody and child support policy.

This study explores the relationship between family complexity and major depressive symptoms among middle-aged women, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). By analyzing relationship trajectories, transitions, and statuses, this research uncovers how various relational dynamics influence mental health outcomes. Findings reveal that stable marital relationships are associated with lower depression rates, while individuals with multiple relationship transitions or complex trajectories experience higher odds of major depressive symptoms. These results underscore the importance of relational history in diagnosing and treating depression among women, advocating for the incorporation of relational context into mental health assessments. The study’s implications suggest that addressing relational instability in therapeutic interventions can significantly improve mental health outcomes for women in midlife.

Research on child support compliance has focused on the characteristics of noncustodial parents (NCPs) that are associated with compliance, finding that compliance with child support orders is primarily related to the ability to pay support as demonstrated by earnings. Yet, there is evidence linking social support networks to both earnings and noncustodial parents' relationships with children. Using a social poverty framework, we show that relatively few NCPs are completely isolated: most have at least some people in their network who can loan money, provide a place to stay, or provide a ride. We explore whether the size of these instrumental support networks is positively linked to child support compliance both directly and indirectly through earnings. We find evidence of a direct association between instrumental support network size and child support compliance, but no evidence of an indirect association via increased earnings. These findings suggest the importance for researchers and child support practitioners to consider the contextual and relational factors of the social networks in which parents are embedded, and to more thoroughly examine the process by which support from one's network can lead to child support compliance.

Poverty is experienced by about 15% of children under the age of six in the United States at any given time and over 40% of children at least once prior to kindergarten entry. Given that many families experience dips in and out of poverty prior to school entry, increasing research focuses on early household economic conditions and family income instability among such families. Using Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort data (2001-2007) sampling children in poor and moderate income families and two relevant theoretical frameworks, the present study investigated (a) the extent to which income varies around the official poverty threshold (as well as other relevant thresholds used to determine social safety net program eligibility) in a subsample of low-to -moderate income families, and (b) the early, time-variant factors associated with membership in specific birth to kindergarten income trajectories as well as fluctuations around well-used income thresholds in a subsample of low-to-moderate income families. Sixty-seven percent of children in the study were classified in the stable low income trajectory, and findings suggest the majority of these children oscillated above and below 100% Federal Poverty Level (FPL) at various times throughout early childhood (55%). Results also suggest birth, child, and family characteristics such as changes in maternal depression, maternal work status, and household composition differentiate income trajectory class membership and are associated with income fluctuation around 100% FPL and 130% FPL. Findings are discussed in the context of current dialogue about the nature of family poverty over time, and the limitations of social policy responses that attend to family needs at one point-in-time without consideration of trajectories and the consequences of cyclical poverty for children and their families.

Families (and sometimes courts) make important decisions regarding child physical custody arrangements post-separation, and shared parenting arrangements are increasingly common in most developed countries. Shared arrangements may be differentially associated with parental satisfaction, and these associations may vary across countries. Using data from surveys of separated mothers in Wisconsin and Finland, the present study explores this possibility and is guided by three aims: (a) to identify child and family characteristics associated with sole and shared child placements 6 or more years after separation; (b) to estimate associations of children's post-separation placements with maternal satisfaction with placements and expense sharing; (c) to examine whether the relationship between post-separation placement and maternal satisfaction varies by mothers' earnings and the quality of parents' relationships. We find that Finnish mothers with shared placement are more satisfied with their placement than are their counterparts with sole placement, while we find the inverse is true for Wisconsin mothers. Moreover, parental satisfaction with shared placement, overall and relative to sole placement, varies greatly depending on the quality of a mother's relationship with the other parent; and differences in relationship quality in Wisconsin and Finland may help explain the difference in satisfaction with shared placement in the two locations. In both Finland and Wisconsin, we find mothers with shared placement are more satisfied with the way expenses are shared between parents than are mothers with sole placement. Associations between placement and satisfaction are robust to extensive controls for child and maternal characteristics.

The amount of accumulated unpaid child support (arrears) owed throughout the United States is over $100 billion. High arrears balances mean that those who owe support may face punitive enforcement actions, those due child support did not receive the money they were owed, and the child support program must devote more attention to enforcing payment of past-due amounts at the expense of enforcing current amounts due, diverting the program's efforts and raising the cost of enforcement. To address the problems associated with high arrears, Wisconsin reduced the amount of interest due on child support arrears from 1% per month to 0.5% per month. We leverage Wisconsin child support administrative records to conduct both descriptive and multiple regression analyses to explore arrears and payment patterns before and after the change. Findings suggest the policy not only slowed the rate of arrears growth but also increased payment amounts. Those who did not owe arrears at the beginning of the period made higher payments when they did get behind than those who owed higher arrears. Our analyses cannot prove causality, but they do provide some of the first evidence of what happens after the interest rate changes.

Family income strongly influences child development. However, the impact of income trajectories on developmental outcomes is unclear. Using nationally representative data of children in poor and moderate income families and three relevant theoretical frameworks, the present study (a) empirically classified family income from 2001 to 2007 and (b) evaluated associations between derived income trajectories and kindergarten outcomes. Results identified four distinct family income trajectory profiles: stable adequate, low to adequate, stable low, and adequate to low. Most children were classified in the stable low trajectory (67%). Multiple regression results suggested children in the stable low trajectory demonstrated poorer kindergarten outcomes than children in more advantaged trajectories, and children who experience economic disadvantage early with later income growth display poorer reading outcomes than children who were economically advantaged initially and experience later income decline. Findings are discussed in the context of current dialogue about the nature of family poverty over time.

Background Despite rich cultural, lingual, and tribal assets, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) children experience suboptimal educational outcomes that start before kindergarten entry. Evidence suggests that home literacy activities may be supportive of developmental outcomes within this population, but these home literacy activities have not been substantially investigated with AIAN populations. Objective This study examined how the overall home literacy context and individual home literacy indicators (i.e., frequency of shared book reading, singing songs, telling stories, and the number of books in the home) relate to AIAN children's preschool reading and math skills. Method This study comprised data from the ECLS-B, which included a nationally-representative sample of 10,400 children born in 2001 and a deliberate oversample of AIAN children. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationships between home literacy and preschool reading and math skills with an analytic sample of 650 AIAN children. Results Overall home literacy context was supportive of AIAN children's reading and math skill development, and the particular import of shared book reading was found in improving reading skills. Conclusion Findings support the value of what parents do with their children (i.e. participate in home literacy activities) above and beyond relatively static economic or social characteristics (e.g., maternal education, income-to-needs ratio).

This study examined individual and cumulative relations between child and family experiences from birth to school entry and kindergarten reading and mathematics achievement. Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), this study documented prevalence and co-occurrence rates of publicly monitored risks, uncovering higher rates of relevant risks than prior research for poverty, low maternal education, maternal depression, and birth to a single parent. Findings demonstrated significant relationships between multiple risks (i.e., poverty, preterm/low birthweight, low maternal education, single mother, inadequate prenatal care, teen mother, and maternal depression) with academic outcomes. Findings also demonstrated the incremental disadvantages of cumulative risk exposure to academic outcomes, adding to our understanding of cumulative risk with this specific combination of relevant experiences. Findings provide actionable intelligence for public service systems charged with improving child outcomes that goes beyond intractable characteristics of poverty or race, and have implications for cross-sector partnerships among departments of education, public health, and child welfare to address early achievement gaps.

ABSTRACTBACKGROUNDWe examined prevalence, incidence, and trajectory of obesity from kindergarten through grade 8 in one of the first states to implement annual surveillance.METHODSParticipants included 16,414 children enrolled in kindergarten in Arkansas in 2004 with complete body mass index (BMI) measurements in kindergarten and eighth grade. Repeated measures of weight status were entered in multiple linear and logistic regression models with demographics and family poverty status.RESULTSThe prevalence of obesity (BMI ≥ 95th percentile) was lowest in kindergarten (14.9%), with subsequent incidence rates consistent at 4%. Prevalence and incidence peaked in eighth grade (24.5% and 4.9%, respectively), with 33.8% of children measuring obese at least once by eighth grade. Kindergarten obesity was a significant predictor of eighth grade obesity (odds ratio, 17.5; 95% confidence interval, 15.8‐19.3). We found statistically significant 3‐way interactions for sex, race, and time, suggesting unique patterns for Hispanic boys and black girls.CONCLUSIONSOur study documents unique longitudinal patterns of obesity from kindergarten through eighth grade that expand our understanding of risk. It demonstrates the value of public school health systems that collect routine administrative data about student BMI that is integrated with education records to foster program and policy discussions.

Using a nationally representative dataset (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort) and bioecological-cumulative disadvantage framework, the present study investigated the relations between salient child and family risk experiences and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) children's kindergarten academic and behavioral outcomes. Using hierarchical linear regression, individual risk models, cumulative risk models, and interaction models examining combinations of two types of individual risks were examined. Individual risk models including seven risks (i.e., poverty, preterm/low birth weight, low maternal education, single motherhood, inadequate prenatal care, teen motherhood, and severe maternal depression) revealed that poverty exposure at any point prior to kindergarten was associated with AIAN children's kindergarten academic skills (i.e., reading and math). Cumulative risk models suggest that children exposed to two or more risks displayed lower reading and math skills than those exposed to no or one risk. The interaction models revealed significant risk by risk interaction effects for kindergarten math and all behavior outcomes examined in this study. Specifically, children who experienced poverty and had mothers with risk characteristics (i.e., without a high school diploma or who gave birth as teenagers) demonstrated poorer behavioral outcomes (i.e., lower social competence and approaches to learning as well as higher externalizing behaviors) than children experienced poverty but with mothers having no such risk characteristics. Interestingly, findings also revealed that children living in poverty presented better kindergarten outcomes (i.e., scored higher on math and approaches to learning and lower on externalizing behaviors) when they were living with single mothers than with married/cohabitating parents. Given the salience of specific combinations of poverty and maternal characteristics for AIAN children, implications for two-generation programming is discussed along with the potential value of extended family networks. Further study implication was discussed.