Parental Job Loss and Early Child Development in the Great Recession

Insecure maternal employment and children's behaviour difficulties: Evidence from the longitudinal study of Australian children

Although a large body of research has documented the negative effects of insecure employment for adult workers, less is known about the consequences for their children's well-being. Our understanding of the mechanisms through which insecure maternal employment may affect children is particularly limited. This study examines the relationship between insecure maternal employment and child behaviour difficulties from the age of 4-16 using seven waves of data for nearly 5000 families from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Employing fixed effects models to account for unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity, we found that children whose mothers were casual contract employees or economically inactive had greater behaviour difficulties, on average, than their peers whose mothers were permanent employees. Maternal mental health and parenting, rather than household financial strain, contributed to explaining the association between insecure maternal employment and child behaviour difficulties. These results were more pronounced for younger children (up to the age of 12). This study contributes to the literature on the consequences of maternal employment insecurity for child mental health in high-income countries by clarifying the mechanisms behind this association.

Effects of parental job loss on psychotropic drug use in children: Long-term effects, timing, and cumulative exposure

Intra-family crossover effects triggered by job losses have received growing attention across scientific disciplines, but existing research has reached discrepant conclusions concerning if, and if so how, parental job losses affect child mental health. Drawing on sociological models of stress and life course epidemiology, we ask if parental job losses have long-term effects on child mental health, and if these effects are conditional on the timing of, or the cumulative exposure to, job losses. We use intergenerationally linked Swedish register data combined with entropy balance and structural nested mean models for the analyses. The data allow us to track 400,000 children over 14 years and thereby test different life-course models of cross-over effects. We identify involuntary job losses using information on workplace closures, thus reducing the risk of confounding. Results show that paternal but not maternal job loss significantly increases the risk of psychotropic drug use among children, that the average effects are modest in size (less than 4% in relative terms), that they may persist for up to five years, and that they are driven by children aged 6-10 years. Moreover, cumulative exposure to multiple job losses are more harmful than zero or one job loss.

Assessing national action through emergency paid leave to mitigate the impact of COVID-19-related school closures on working families in 182 countries

In April 2020, nearly 1.6 billion learners were out of school. While a growing body of literature has documented the detrimental impact of these closures on children, less attention has been devoted to the steps countries took to mitigate the impact of these closures on working families. Paid leave is recognized as an important policy tool to enable working parents the time they need to respond to family needs without risking job or income loss. This article uses a novel data set to assess whether countries had policies in place prior to the pandemic to respond to increased care needs and the extent to which policies were introduced or expanded during the pandemic to fill the gap. Only 48 countries had policies in place prior to the pandemic that could be used to respond to the care needs created by school and childcare center closures. In the vast majority of these countries, the duration of leave in these policies was too short to meet the care needs of the pandemic or relied on parents reserving extended parental leave options. Only 36 countries passed new legislation during the pandemic, but the majority of those that did covered the full duration of closures. As countries continue to face COVID-19 and consider how to better prepare for the next pandemic, emergency childcare paid leave policies should be part of pandemic preparedness frameworks to prevent further exacerbating inequalities. The policies introduced during the pandemic offer a wide range of approaches for countries to identify feasible solutions.

COVID-19-related financial strain and adolescent mental health

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated responses have induced a host of crises worldwide, including an economic recession and a global mental health crisis. The specific effects of recession on youth mental health are understudied. We aimed to examine the mechanisms by which pandemic-related financial strain may affect mental health in a diverse sample of American adolescents.

Methods

We analyzed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study®), a large, longitudinal study of diverse US adolescents which collected data before and during the pandemic (N = 9,720, mean age 12.9 years, 18.2% Black). Linear mixed-effects models tested associations of financial strain (parent-reported household wage loss and youth-reported financial stress) with depressive symptomatology over time, covarying for multiple confounders including pre-pandemic socioeconomic status and psychopathology, and pandemic-related environmental factors. Longitudinal mediation analyses examined potential mechanisms leading from wage loss to youth mental health.

Findings

Financial strain was highly prevalent, especially among low-income participants, with >70% of the total sample reporting lost wages. Both wage loss and subjective financial stress were associated with depressive symptomatology over time (Estimate = 0.04, P = 0.014; Estimate = 0.17, P < 0.001; respectively). The association between financial stress and depressive symptomatology was robust to the addition of multiple environmental confounders (Estimate = 0.16, P < 0.001). Both family-level (family conflict) and individual-level (financial stress) factors mediated the relationship between wage loss and depressive symptomatology.

Interpretation

The financial effects of COVID-19 (and worldwide responses to it) have taken a significant toll on youth mental health. In families that lost wages, youth-reported financial stress and familial factors mediated the relationship between wage loss and mental health over time. Findings highlight financial stress as a key driver of youth mental health burden and identify familial factors as critical targets for intervention to mitigate mental health risks in periods of economic crises.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health [grant numbers K23MH120437 (RB), R01MH117014 (TMM)]; the Lifespan Brain Institute of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.