Deleire, Thomas
Kalil, Ariel
Who Becomes a Multigenerational Grandmother? Selection into Multigenerational Households
Presented: Philadelphia, PA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March-April 2005
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Coresidence; Family, Extended; Grandmothers; Parents, Single;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Who becomes a multigenerational grandmother? Multigenerational coresidence is increasingly prevalent among adult single mothers with children. Research on the effects of multigenerational coresidence on children, however, is equivocal, though our recent study (DeLeire and Kalil, 2002) found that teenagers in multigenerational families have better educational and behavioral outcomes than even teenagers in 2-biological parent families. Understanding issues of who chooses to form a multigenerational household is necessary for understanding whether observed positive benefits of multigenerational coresidence are merely the result of selection. To address this question, we use data on a sample of 640 grandmothers from the NLSY-CS, 44% of whom have co-resided with their daughter and grandchild

Duncan, Greg J.
Kalil, Ariel
Mayer, Susan E.
Tepper, Robin L.
Payne, Monique R.
The Apple Does Not Fall Far from the Tree
In: Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success. S. Bowles, H. Gintis, and M. O. Groves eds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008: pp. 23-79
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Behavior Problems Index (BPI); CESD (Depression Scale); Cognitive Ability; Depression (see also CESD); Deviance; Economic Well-Being; Genetics; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Parental Influences; Parenting Skills; Parents, Behavior; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Pearlin Mastery Scale; Risk-Taking; Role Models; Socioeconomic Status (SES); Well-Being;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Duncan, Greg J.
Kalil, Ariel
Mayer, Susan E.
Tepper, Robin L.
Payne, Monique R.
The Apple Does Not Fall Far from the Tree
Working Paper WP-02-17, Institute for Policy Research, Chicago IL, March 16, 2002.
Also: http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/2002/WP-02-17.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern University - (formerly Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research)
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Behavioral Problems; CESD (Depression Scale); Cognitive Ability; Depression (see also CESD); Economic Well-Being; Genetics; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Parental Influences; Parenting Skills; Parents, Behavior; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Pearlin Mastery Scale; Risk-Taking; Role Models; Socioeconomic Status (SES); Well-Being;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), the Children of the NLSY, and from a study in Prince George's County, Maryland, to assess the relationship between 17 characteristics of mothers measured during adolescence and the same characteristics of their children, also measured during adolescence. We find positive correlations between specific characteristics of parents and children. But we also find that few parental characteristics predict characteristics of children other than the same one that is measured in parents. Four mechanisms might explain such correlations — socioeconomic resources, parenting practices, genetic inheritance, and role modeling. These four mechanisms make varying predictions about which parental traits will be correlated with which child traits; whether the traits of fathers or mothers should be more important to sons or daughters; and to what extent parental socioeconomic characteristics, parenting behaviors, and children's identification with their parents account for the observed correlations. Our evidence provides little support for the SES and parenting explanations, but more substantial support that role modeling may account for some of the intergenerational correlations, and genetic factors may account for others.

Kalil, Ariel
Khalid, Salma
Accounting for the Intergenerational Elasticity of Education: Cognitive Ability, Socioeconomic Status, Non-Cognitive Skills and Home Environment
Presented: Washington, DC, Population Association of America Annual Meetings, March 31-April 2, 2011
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Cognitive Ability; Education; Home Environment; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Noncognitive Skills; Socioeconomic Status (SES);

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper uses data from the NLSY97 (n= 3,459) to explore the intergenerational transmission of education from parents to their children and the factors that mediate this transmission. Children are initially observed in 1997 at ages 12-14, when measures of their cognitive abilities, family backgrounds, non-cognitive skills, and home environments are collected. Educational attainment is measured in 2007. We show a correlation of .43 between parents' and offsprings' years of education. Children's cognitive skills account for 29% of this association. However, when we expand our model to include family economic background, parents' and youth's efficacy and expectations, and measures of the home environment, we explain 60% of this correlation. Family economic background plays a comparatively greater role for less-educated families, whereas expectations figure prominently for higher-educated families. These findings are important insofar as resources, expectations, and home environments may be improved through targeted and effective child and education policy.

Kalil, Ariel
Kunz, James Peter
Teenage Childbearing, Marital Status, and Depressive Symptoms in Later Life
Child Development 73,6 (November-December 2002): 1748-1760.
Also: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8624.00503
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing, Inc. => Wiley Online
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Age at First Birth; Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); CESD (Depression Scale); Childbearing; Delinquency/Gang Activity; Depression (see also CESD); Household Composition; Marital Status; Mothers, Education; Racial Differences; Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) (see Self-Esteem);

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This study examined the role of prechildbearing characteristics in later-life depressive symptomatology among 990 married and unmarried teenage childbearers. Data from teenagers in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) were used to test the relative contribution of age and marital status at first birth to depressive symptomatology measured during young adulthood (ages 27-29). Unmarried teenage childbearers displayed higher levels of depressive symptoms in young adulthood than did women who first gave birth as married adults. However, the psychological health of married teenager mothers later in life was as good as that of married adult mothers, whereas unmarried adult mothers and unmarried teenage mothers had similar poor outcomes. The findings of this study suggest that marital status, rather than age of first birth, may be more relevant for later-life psychological health.

Kalil, Ariel
Kunz, James Peter
Long-Term Effects of Teenage Childbearing on Mental Health in Young Adulthood
Presented: Evanston, IL, Nothrwestern University, Joint Center for Poverty Research: Poverty Research Seminars 2000-2001, May 2001.
Also: http://www.jcpr.org/povsem/teenmoms_paper.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Joint Center for Poverty Research
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Age at First Birth; Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); CESD (Depression Scale); Depression (see also CESD); Family Background; Fertility; Health, Mental; Marriage; Parental Marital Status; Self-Esteem;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

High levels of depressive symptoms among teenage mothers are typically attributed to the "impact" or "consequences" of early parenting; recent studies, however, challenge the view that negative life outcomes observed among teenage childbearers are attributable to early childbearing, per se, suggesting instead that pre-childbearing selection factors play an important role. We draw on data from 609 black and white adolescents in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to test the relative contribution of age and marital status at first birth to depressive symptomatology measured during young adulthood (ages 27-29). At the univariate level, teenage childbearers display, as expected, significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms during young adulthood than women who first give birth as married adults. These differences are dramatically reduced and no longer significant once pre-childbearing individual background characteristics, measured during adolescence, are controlled. Academic achievement and self-esteem measured in early adolescence are especially important in explaining differences among the groups in mental health in later life.

Kalil, Ariel
Ziol-Guest, Kathleen M.
Single Mothers' Employment Dynamics and Adolescent Well-Being
Presented: Boston, MA, Population Association of America Meetings, April 2004
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): School Dropouts; School Progress; Self-Esteem;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Researchers have been concerned with the largely unaddressed question of the links between single mother job characteristics and child well-being. In this paper, we use data from a nationally-representative sample of single mothers whose employment experiences we observe over a two-year period during the mid-to-late 1990's. We link employment patterns to change over time in multiple measures of child well-being. Controlling for background characteristics and potential selection factors, we find that, relative to being continuously employed in a good job, teens whose mothers lose a job without re-employment show a decline in self-esteem; those whose mothers are continually employed in a bad job are more at risk for grade repetition; and those whose mothers are persistently out of the labor force or lose more than one job show an increased likelihood of school drop-out. These effects are largely unexplained by changes in family income over the two-year period.

Kalil, Ariel
Ziol-Guest, Kathleen M.
Single Mothers' Employment Dynamics and Adolescent Well-Being
Working Paper No. 04-10, National Poverty Center, The University of Michigan, June 2004.
Also: http://www.npc.umich.edu/publications/workingpaper04/paper10/04-10.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult
Publisher: National Poverty Center
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); CESD (Depression Scale); Children, Well-Being; Maternal Employment; Pearlin Mastery Scale; Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) (see Self-Esteem); School Progress;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The booming economy of the mid-to- late 1990's helped single mothers reach unprecedented employment levels. Researchers have been concerned with the largely unaddressed questions of whether single mothers who enter the workforce will be able to earn a living wage, the stability of women's jobs over time, and the links between these job characteristics and child well-being. In this paper, we use data from a nationally- representative sample of single mothers whose employment experiences we observe over a two-year period during the mid-to-late 1990's. We rely on mothers' weekly work histories to create detailed patterns of employment, which we then link to change over time in the well-being of the mothers' adolescent children. Controlling for a wide array of background characteristics and potential selection factors, we find that, relative to being continuously employed in a good job, adolescents whose mothers lose a job without regaining employment show declines in mastery and self-esteem. Those whose mothers are continuously employed in a bad job show an increase in grade repetition and those whose mothers are either persistently out of the labor force or lose more than one job show an increased likelihood of school drop-out. These effects are largely unexplained by concomitant changes in family income.

Kalil, Ariel
Ziol-Guest, Kathleen M.
Single Mothers' Employment Dynamics and Adolescent Well-Being
Child Development 76,1 (January/February 2005): 196-212.
Also: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2005.00839.x/abstract
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing, Inc. => Wiley Online
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); CESD (Depression Scale); Maternal Employment; Parents, Single; Pearlin Mastery Scale; Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) (see Self-Esteem); School Completion; School Dropouts; School Progress; Self-Esteem;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The links between single mothers' employment patterns and change over time in the well-being of the mothers' adolescent children were investigated using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Adolescents were ages 14 to 16 at baseline, and they and their mothers were followed for 2 years. Relative to being continuously employed in a good job, findings suggest that adolescents whose mothers lose a job without regaining employment show declines in mastery and self-esteem, those whose mothers are continuously employed in a bad job show an increased likelihood of grade repetition, and those whose mothers are either persistently unemployed or lose more than one job show an increased likelihood of school dropout. These effects are not explained by concomitant changes in family income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kalil, Ariel
Ziol-Guest, Kathleen M.
Epstein, Jodie Levin
Nonstandard Work and Marital Instability: Evidence From the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
Journal of Marriage and Family 72,5 (October 2010): 1289-1300.
Also: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00765.x/full
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing, Inc. => Wiley Online
Keyword(s): Family Characteristics; Marital Stability; Unemployment; Work Hours; Work, Atypical;

This article replicated and extended Harriet Presser's (2000) investigation of the linkages between nonstandard work and marital instability. We reexplored this question using data from a sample of 2,893 newlywed couples from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and using different analytic techniques. In contrast to Presser, we found that the key dimension of husbands' and wives' employment was nonemployment. Similar to Presser, we found that wives' working of fixed night shifts increased the risk of divorce, driven by the experience in marriages over 5 years in duration. However, we did not replicate Presser's finding that the effect is significant only among households with children; rather, wives' fixed night shifts were associated with divorce only among those without children.

Magnuson, Katherine A.
Duncan, Greg J.
Kalil, Ariel
Contribution of Middle Childhood Contexts to Adolescent Achievement and Behavior
In: Developmental Contexts in Middle Childhood: Bridges to Adolescence and Adulthood. A. Huston and M. Ripke, eds., New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006: 150-172.
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Child Self-Administered Supplement (CSAS); Family Characteristics; Family Structure; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Household Structure; Neighborhood Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Poverty; School Characteristics/Rating/Safety; Schooling; Temperament;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Our chapter seeks to assess the extent to which the diverse contexts experienced during middle childhood matter for children's subsequent well-being. Given the established importance of genetic factors and pre-school family background conditions, the extent to which contexts during the middle childhood years play a role in shaping – the achievement and behavior trajectories established during the preschool years is far from clear.

We address three specific questions. First, how much variation in adolescents' academic achievement and problem behaviors are uniquely explained by the contexts they experience in middle childhood? Second, to the extent that middle childhood contexts matter, which contexts matter the most? And third, are the effects of contexts in middle childhood on early adolescents' outcomes different for boys and girls and for poor and middle class children?

Our answers to these questions are based on an analysis of data from a national sample of over 2,000 children followed from birth until adolescence. Family poverty, structure and home environments are measured throughout this time, enabling us to both describe the stability of contexts between early and middle childhood and assess the extent to which middle childhood contexts add to the explanation of adolescent achievement and behavior over and above early environments.

Magnuson, Katherine A.
Duncan, Greg J.
Kalil, Ariel
Contribution of Middle Childhood Contexts to Adolescent Achievement and Behavior
Working Paper, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, June 2003
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern University - (formerly Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research)
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Child Self-Administered Supplement (CSAS); Family Characteristics; Family Structure; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Household Structure; Neighborhood Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Poverty; School Characteristics/Rating/Safety; Schooling; Temperament;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We address three specific questions. First, how much variation in adolescents' academic achievement and problem behaviors are uniquely explained by the contexts they experience in middle childhood? Second, to the extent that middle childhood contexts matter, which contexts matter the most? And third, are the effects of contexts in middle childhood on early adolescents' outcomes different for boys and girls and for poor and middle class children?

Our answers to these questions are based on an analysis of data from a national sample of over 2,000 children followed from birth until adolescence. Family poverty, structure and home environments are measured throughout this time, enabling us to both describe the stability of contexts between early and middle childhood and assess the extent to which middle childhood contexts add to the explanation of adolescent achievement and behavior over and above early environments.

Mayer, Susan E.
Duncan, Greg J.
Kalil, Ariel
Tepper, Robin L.
Like Mother Like Daughter: Does SES Account for the Similarity between Mothers and Daughters?
Presented: Chicago, IL, Joint Center for Poverty Research, "Family Investments in Children's Potential", Research Conference, September 2002.
Also: http://www.jcpr.org/conferences/SRI_2002/mayer.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Joint Center for Poverty Research
Keyword(s): Adolescent Behavior; CESD (Depression Scale); Child Self-Administered Supplement (CSAS); Depression (see also CESD); Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Pearlin Mastery Scale; Self-Esteem; Shyness; Socioeconomic Status (SES);

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

[This paper assesses the importance of maternal income and education to daughters' adolescent characteristics that are associated with her own future economic success. The analysis looks beyond socio-economic status to account for the strong correlations between parents' and children's educational achievement, psychological and personality characteristics, attitudes, interests, and highrisk behaviors, such as smoking, early pregnancy, or antisocial behavior. Although their findings are preliminary, they suggest a lesser role for socioeconomic status than previously thought.

Specifically, the authors find that mothers' own characteristics, measured when she herself was an adolescent, can predict her future income and education, and the latter, in turn, predict her daughter's adolescent characteristics, which presumably predict the daughter's future income and education. These findings are important for research and policy on several levels. In short, the authors argue that the importance of socioeconomic status will be overstated if researchers omit a mother's own adolescent characteristics in their measurement models.

Ziol-Guest, Kathleen M.
Dunifon, Rachel
Kalil, Ariel
Parental Employment and Children's Body Weight: Mothers, Others, and Mechanisms
Social Science and Medicine published online (14 September 2012): DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.09.004.
Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953612006673
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Elsevier
Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Employment; Maternal Employment; Obesity; Parental Influences; Television Viewing; Weight; Work Hours;

A robust body of literature spanning several countries indicates a positive association between maternal employment and child body mass index (BMI). Fewer studies have examined the role of paternal employment. More importantly, little empirical work examines the mechanisms that might explain the relationships between parental employment and children's BMI. Our paper tests the relationship between the cumulative experience of maternal and spouse employment over a child's lifetime and that child's BMI, overweight, and obesity at age 13 or 14. We further examine several mechanisms that may explain these associations. We use data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) merged mother–child file on cohorts of children who were born during a period of dramatic increase in both childhood obesity and maternal employment. We find that the number of hours that highly-educated mothers work over her child's lifetime is positively and statistically significantly associated with her child's BMI and risk of overweight at ages 13 or 14. The work hours of mothers' spouses and partners, on the other hand, are not significantly associated with these outcomes. Results suggest that, for children of highly-educated mothers, the association between maternal work hours and child BMI is partially mediated by television viewing time.