Work, Time, and Money in the Family – Policies and Events That Shape Us
Paper Session
Friday, Jan. 7, 2022 3:45 PM - 5:45 PM (EST)
- Chair: Gray Kimbrough, American University
Parental Disability and Teenagers’ Time Allocation
Abstract
Using the 2003–2019 American Time Use Survey, we examine how living with a parent who has a work-limiting disability is related to teenagers’ time allocation. For girls, we find that living with a disabled parent is associated with less time spent on educational activities, including both class time and homework, less time spent on shopping, and more time spent on market work, pet care, and leisure. For boys, living with a disabled parent is associated with less time spent sleeping. In addition, when examining the time spent by girls and boys in two-parent households, we find that the gender of the disabled parent matters. Girls living with a disabled mother in a two-parent household spend less time on educational activities and more time on market work and pet care, suggesting that girls may take on some of a disabled mother’s activities. Boys living with a disabled mother in a two-parent household spend more time on homework and less time on housework and caring for household children. However, if their father is disabled, boys spend more time on food preparation and cleanup. Boys living with a disabled father also spend less time with their mother. Thus, there are differences in teens’ time use that depend on both the gender of the teen and of the disabled parent, with teen girls likely being worse off than teen boys. Our results suggest that differences in teenagers’ time investments are a plausible mechanism for gender differences in intergenerational economic mobility by parental-disability status.The Effect of Washington DC Universal Pre-K Program on Maternal Labor Supply
Abstract
On May 6, 2008, Washington D.C. passed the Pre-K Enhancement and Expansion Act of 2008 to provide all three- and four-year olds in DC universal access to high-quality pre-Kindergarten education. By school year 2018-2019, around 80 percent of eligible children in the District were served in a public Pre-K program. While the primary goal of universal Pre-k program is to invest in the human capital of children that low-income parents are unable to provide, the pro-gram is also justified by increasing low-income family pay and maternal labor supply. Using administrative data from the IRS and the District of Columbia, we designed a study to analyze the impact of the DC universal Pre-K program on the labor supply of unmarried working moth-ers using a Different-in-Differences (DID) framework. Our results show that after the estab-lishment of universal Pre-k in DC, single parents tended to work less before the child was eli-gible for the universal Pre-k program and recover to pre-policy when the child was eligible for the program, when comparing with earnings before the implementation of the universal pre-K policy and controlling other factors. This seems to imply that the city’s universal Pre-K pro-gram produced income effects that significantly affected the labor supply for single parents in DC with younger children eligible for universal Pre-K program.Impact of DACA on Immigrant Credit Access
Abstract
Consumers need credit access to smooth consumption over time and endure financial shocks, but such access varies greatly across individuals. Among immigrants, for example, legal status may influence how and whether they can access credit through formal channels, such as banks. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, implemented in 2012, granted temporary but renewable legal status to over 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. DACA provides deferral from deportation, temporary work permits, and a Social Security number to eligible undocumented immigrants.We use the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel (CCP)/Equifax data to examine the impact of DACA eligibility on credit reporting, borrowing behavior and loan performance, exploiting the variation in likely eligibility based on an individual’s age and location. Eligible immigrants for DACA program must be born after June 15, 1981 and tend to live in areas with high concentrations of Hispanic immigrants. The CCP/Equifax data do not contain demographic identifiers that allow direct identification of immigrants, but we can compare the credit experience between cohorts that are right above and below the age cutoff of the program. In addition, to ensure that the credit data capture the experience of the affected population, we focus on areas with potentially large shares of undocumented immigrants. We construct various estimates of the share of undocumented population based on characteristics of individual consumers as well as demographic information from the American Community Survey including foreign born status, birth country, birth year, naturalization, race/ethnicity, language spoken, English proficiency, income, education attainment, etc. The study documents the immediate and long-term impact of DACA on credit access and provides insights on the implications of the program for immigrants’ paths to economic inclusion.
Discussant(s)
Kate Bahn
,
Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Katie M. Jajtner
,
University of Wisconsin
Danielle H. Sandler
,
U.S. Census Bureau
Nathan Blascak
,
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
JEL Classifications
- E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
- O4 - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity