Lone parents' employment policy and adolescents' socioemotional development: Quasi-experimental evidence from a UK reform.
Details
Serval ID
serval:BIB_4FC1D14A9296
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Lone parents' employment policy and adolescents' socioemotional development: Quasi-experimental evidence from a UK reform.
Journal
Social science & medicine
ISSN
1873-5347 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
0277-9536
Publication state
Published
Issued date
03/2023
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
320
Pages
115754
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article
Publication Status: ppublish
Publication Status: ppublish
Abstract
Studies suggest that welfare-to-work programmes increase lone mother's employment, but their impact on child and adolescent socioemotional development is unclear. The lone parent obligation (LPO) reform introduced a requirement for lone mothers entitled to unconditional Income Support (IS) to seek paid work actively as a condition to receive benefits. We use data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study to examine the impact of work search requirements for lone parents on child and adolescent socioemotional development. We apply a difference-in-differences approach that exploits gradual changes from 2008 to 2017 in children's maximum eligibility age to receive IS and assess effects on child and adolescent Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) scores. We find that the LPO reform led to a ten-percentage point increase in lone mothers' employment but no change in the risk of family poverty. The reform led to a small but statistically significant increase in adolescents' SDQ scores, which indicated worse mental health and was largely driven by increased emotional problems. It also led to an increase in mothers' distress and poor self-rated health, and mothers' reports that time spent with children was insufficient. Our findings highlight the need to consider trade-offs between employment gains and child and adolescent socioemotional development in assessing the net impact of welfare-to-work policies targeting lone parents.
Keywords
Child, Female, Adolescent, Humans, Cohort Studies, Employment/psychology, Parents, Mothers/psychology, United Kingdom, Employment policy, Lone parent, Socioemotional development
Pubmed
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Funding(s)
Other / Economic and Social Research Council
Create date
21/02/2023 9:56
Last modification date
03/10/2023 7:10