The Effects of Large-Scale Economic Change and Policies on Children’s Developmental Contexts and Developmental Outcomes

Neighborhood Economic Changes After the Great Recession and Home Food Environments

Objective. Home food environments are important contexts for children and their food intake. It is unknown whether neighborhood economic context plays a role in explaining the association between a national economic crisis and children's home food environments. This study attempts to investigate neighborhood economic changes after the Great Recession and their associations with home food environments. Method. Using data from the Geographic Research on Wellbeing survey (2012-2013), we conducted a series of logistic regression analyses to examine the association between neighborhood changes after the Great Recession and home food environments. Results. Findings showed that neighborhood economic changes after the Great Recession were concentrated in poor neighborhoods. In addition, our findings demonstrated that poor families residing in neighborhoods severely affected by the Great Recession were vulnerable to less availability of fruits and vegetables in the home after the Great Recession. Discussion. Findings imply that public health interventions aiming to improve home food environments should include strategies at the national and neighborhood levels as well as the family level. A priority population for public health interventions should be poor families living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

How do economic downturns affect the mental health of children? Evidence from the National Health Interview Survey

Research linking economic conditions and health often does not consider children's mental health problems, which are the most common and consequential health issues for children and adolescents. We examine the effects of unemployment rates and housing prices on well-validated child and adolescent mental health outcomes and use of special education services for emotional problems in the 2001-2013 National Health Interview Survey. We find that the effects of economic conditions on children's mental health are clinically and economically meaningful; children's mental health outcomes worsen as the economy weakens. The effects of economic conditions on child and adolescent mental health are pervasive, found in almost every subgroup that we examine. The use of special education services for emotional problems also rises when economic conditions worsen. Our analyses of possible mechanisms that link economic conditions to child mental health suggest that parental unemployment cannot fully explain the relationship between economic conditions and child mental health.

The Great Recession and Children's Mental Health in Australia

This paper analyzes the effects of “shocks” to community-level unemployment expectations, induced by the onset of the Great Recession, on children’s mental well-being. The Australian experience of the Great Recession represents a unique case study as despite little change in actual unemployment rates, levels of economic uncertainty grew. This affords us the ability to examine the effects of shocks to economic expectations independent of any actual changes to economic conditions. We draw on and link data from multiple sources, including several waves of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (2004–2010), a consumer sentiment survey, and data on local economic conditions. Using our purpose-built data set, we estimate difference-in-differences models to identify plausibly causal effects. We find, for boys, there is no detectable effect of community-level unemployment expectations shocks on mental health. For girls, however, there are modest increases in mental health problems and externalizing behaviors, as measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). We additionally find no discernible change in mother’s psychological distress as a result of expectations shocks. These results are stable after controlling for actual labor market conditions.