Child, Adolescent, and Family Studies Program

Introduction

This interdisciplinary program combines the interests of IPR faculty studying the ways in which social programs, policies, and contexts affect the lives of families and children from birth to young adulthood. Drawing from the fields of human development and social policy, psychology, sociology, economics, and law, many faculty share common interests with scholars in IPR’s programs on Poverty, Race, and Inequality; Social Disparities and Health; and Education Policy—particularly in studying the impact of public policies on America’s poor.

Overview of Activities

Breastfeeding and Obesity

Molly Metzger and Thomas McDade consider social policies that promote child health for better adult outcomes.

A study on breast-feeding by IPR anthropologist Thomas McDade and IPR graduate research assistant Molly Metzger shows that breastfed babies are on average 14 pounds lighter in adolescence when compared with their formula-fed siblings. The researchers studied 488 sibling pairs. The findings, published in the American Journal of Human Biology show that in addition to the significant weight difference between children who were breastfed and those who were not, breastfeeding significantly reduced chances of becoming obese as a teen. This confirms breastfeeding as a highly effective tool to help curb the nation’s childhood obesity epidemic and holds important policy implications for programs, such as the federally funded Women, Infants, and Children program, that involve obesity prevention, child nutrition, and lactation support for new mothers.

Food Packaging, Regulation, and Obesity
The nation’s obesity crisis has led to increased scrutiny of the packaging, labeling, and marketing of food and beverage products. In particular, much attention has turned to the use of front-of-package (FOP) labeling systems, used to summarize and highlight a product’s key nutritional aspects. Communication studies researcher and IPR associate Ellen Wartella is chair of a joint committee by the Institute of Medicine, Centers for Disease Control, and Food and Drug Administration to review current trends in FOP labeling and suggest improvements for the future.

Currently, there are a number of different FOP systems and symbols developed by food manufacturers, retailers, and health organizations. Little evidence has been gathered about which, if any, actually help consumers make healthier food choices. In its first phase, the committee addressed the goal of FOP labeling from a public health standpoint, identifying the information most important for consumers and comparing the advantages and disadvantages of various approaches. To be most effective, the committee finds, FOP labeling should appeal to a general audience and always prominently display serving size and total calories. In addition, FOP labeling should focus on the nutritional elements most strongly linked to U.S. health concerns—specifically, number of calories, saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium—rather than trying to provide a summary health rating or food group information. Wartella is Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Communication.

Food Stamps and Buying Habits
IPR economist Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach is investigating the impact of food stamps on family food consumption. Her recent study with Hilary Hoynes of the University of California, Davis, shows that introduction of the food stamp program led households to increase their overall food spending while simultaneously decreasing out-of-pocket food spending. These findings are more robust than those of past studies, which compared participating and nonparticipating households within the pool of all available households. Since a family’s decision to opt into the program could be a significant confounding factor, Schanzenbach and Hoynes take a different approach, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine how families changed their food buying habits after the program was originally introduced in their county—a change that took place at different times between 1963 and 1975. The researchers find that not only did participating families sharply increase their food spending when the program was introduced—by a monthly amount between $17 and $47—but those families within the sample that had been spending relatively less increased their food spending by relatively more. These results, published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, are consistent with theoretical predictions about how consumers respond to cash and in-kind transfers.

Food Stamps and Health Outcomes
Although improving nutrition among America’s poor is the program’s main goal, most research on food stamps has been unable to establish a strong causal link to improved health outcomes. Thus, Schanzenbach, Hoynes, and Douglas Almond of Columbia University have undertaken a related project that links the program’s introduction to county-by-county data on gestation, birth weights, and neonatal infant mortality. They find that food stamps led to a decrease in infant mortality and improvements in birth weights in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The impact on birth weights was especially strong among the lowest birth-weight babies—a weight increase of  7 percent for whites and between 5 and 11 percent for blacks. Overall, food stamp benefits—which average just $200 per household per month—seem to significantly improve newborn health in poor families. The findings were published in the Review of Economics and Statistics.

Rethinking Welfare Reform Analysis
In Gaining Ground in Illinois: Welfare Reform and Person-Centered Policy Analysis (Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), IPR social policy professor Dan Lewis summarizes data from the Illinois Families Study (IFS), a statewide consortium on welfare reform receipt that he led. Replacing the old welfare system, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) led to increased income for those who transitioned off welfare. Thus, very few families were worse off than four years earlier, despite liberals’ fears to the contrary. On the other hand, conservatives’ belief that getting people off the welfare rolls would lead to a host of social goods—such as families moving to better neighborhoods, better educational outcomes for children, and improvement in the families’ mental health— did not, for the most part, materialize.

John Hagan studies how imprisoning parents affects their children's educaton.

Effects of Parental Incarceration and Family Instability on Children
What difference does it make for a child to have a parent in prison during a key developmental period? Sociologist and legal scholar John Hagan, an IPR associate, is working with Holly Foster of? Texas A&M on a study of parental incarceration, which affects 10 to 20 percent of elementary school children in the United States. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health for 2,000 children of incarcerated fathers, Hagan and Foster are tracing the impact of parental imprisonment into mid-adolescence and early adulthood. One preliminary finding is that having an imprisoned father and also attending a school where many other children have fathers in prison can lower college completion rates from 40 to 10 percent. Hagan is John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law.

In another study of 1,300 youth using data from the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth, Hagan, Foster, and their co-authors find that family stability is more important than family structure, i.e. living in a single-parent household, in assessing a child’s likelihood to engage in antisocial or illegal conduct. They also show that the amount of time a child remains poverty-stricken can affect whether that child is more likely to engage in risky behavior. The findings were published in the journal Deviant Behavior.

Juvenile Delinquency and Noncognitive Skills
Each year, between 300,000 and 600,000 youth spend time in juvenile detention facilities around the nation, with a disproportionate number being low-income and minority youth. IPR economist Jonathan Guryan and Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago have undertaken a new project to examine the underlying problems that cause youth to become involved with delinquency and violence. Previous research indicates that deficits in noncognitive skills—such as self-regulation, impulse control, social information processing, and moral reasoning—might account for involvement with, and relapses into, delinquency.

Using a randomized experimental design, Guryan and Ludwig have begun collecting data on all the approximately 4,000 males, most of whom are Latino or African American, entering a county juvenile detention system over a 14-month period. These youth have been randomly assigned to either a typical residential center or one providing a cognitive behavioral therapy intervention to promote noncognitive skill development.

Northwestern Juvenile Project
Behavioral scientist and IPR associate Linda Teplin leads the Northwestern Juvenile Project, the nation’s largest epidemiological study of the mental health needs and outcomes of delinquent youth. Launched in 1995, the pioneering project regularly interviews its 1,829 participants and tracks their ongoing health needs and life trajectories. Teplin and her colleagues are now focusing on health disparities, especially in HIV/AIDS, mortality, and other health outcomes. To reflect their new focus, the university has renamed the program “Health Disparities and Public Policy.”

Currently, the researchers are examining data on death rates. As of January 2011, 104 youth from the original sample had died, with 67 of them losing their lives to a bullet. That makes the death rate for youth in the study four times higher than the death rate for 15- to 19-year-olds in the general population. The data also reveal large racial and gender disparities, with African American and Hispanic males most at risk. The researchers are now expanding their analyses to examine how substance use, involvement in gangs, and the drug economy affect the likelihood of early violent death. They are addressing a significant omission in the empirical literature because most studies of mortality rely on records from medical examiners’ offices; however, death certificates do not contain information on behavior. Preliminary analyses show that youth who are involved in the drug economy are nearly five times more likely to die before they reach the age of 25.

The Racial Geography of Child Welfare
IPR law professor Dorothy Roberts continues her work on the “racial geography” of child welfare. Her research examines why, on average, black children are four times more likely than white children to be in foster care. She spoke about her research at a June 21 keynote talk in Portland, Oreg., to child welfare policymakers and practitioners from across the state. The conference was sponsored by many groups and governmental organizations, including the Oregon Department of Human Services, Oregon Commission on Children and Families, and the Governor’s Child Welfare Equity Task Force. Roberts is Kirkland & Ellis Professor.

High-Quality Preschools and Better Behavior
IPR developmental psychologist Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and her colleagues published a study in the journal Child Development that focuses on the longer-term effects of early childcare. Findings indicate that children enrolled in high-quality preschool programs tend to exhibit fewer behavioral problems in middle childhood (ages 7 to 11). Boys and African American children seemed especially likely to benefit from higher quality programs in early childhood.

The study was co-authored by Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal of the University of Pittsburgh, Rebekah Levine Coley of Boston College, Carolina Maldonado-Carreño of the Universidad de Los Andes, and Christine Li-Grining of Loyola University Chicago. It uses longitudinal data from Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study, a study of 2,400 low-income children and families in three major U.S. cities that Chase-Lansdale helped to lead. Votruba-Drzal and Li-Grining formerly worked with Chase-Lansdale as IPR graduate research assistants.

	Christine Percheski studies how family dynamics affect income and healthcare.

Family Health Insurance and Timely Care
One of the main goals of the recent healthcare reform law was to increase the number of insured Americans, including children. But insurance coverage, whether public or private, is not enough to ensure that children will receive timely, quality care, according to new findings by IPR social demographer Christine Percheski. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, Percheski and Sharon Bzostek of Harvard are the first to link national data on health insurance coverage and medical care utilization among siblings.

Though siblings in most American families are covered by a single plan, complex insurance arrangements are common among the rising numbers of children growing up in stepfamilies. The difficulties that parents face in navigating multiple healthcare bureaucracies often lead to a decrease in preventive care, as well as an increase emergency room visits. Because emergency care is so much more expensive than regular doctors visits, multiple insurance plans within the same family could be contributing to a rise in overall medical costs for public and private health insurance programs.