Evolving families and child wellbeing

Proportion of shotgun birth is rapidly increasing in South Korea. Using the complete birth records of Korea from 1997 to 2009, we study the impact of shotgun birth and out-of-wedlock birth on birth outcome. The decrease in normal births is almost entirely replaced by shotgun births. We find that premarital pregnancy impact, especially shotgun birth impact, on birth weight and low birth weight probability is either statistically insignificant or economically insignificant. Therefore the impact of rapidly increasing shotgun birth of South Korea on birth outcome is trivial.

The living arrangements in early life are important estimators for the personal development in (young) adulthood. The more stability and the more resources parents can offer the better children will be able to unfold their own resources. Instability, due to divorce or death of a parent, or the loss of resources, due to the loss of a job or income, probably has a negative impact on the welfare of children. Repartnering of parents may have a positive impact (more stability, income) or a negative impact (ambivalence regarding family roles, step ties etc). We still do not know exactly 1) how the living arrangements (parental and economic structure) of contemporary children evolve on a day-to-day basis, nor do we really know 2) much about causality and the size of the effect of instability (changes in parental and economic structure) on the lives of children.
First aim is to describe the dynamics in the living arrangements of all children born in the Netherlands between birth and the age of 11.
Second aim is to use causal modelling to investigate the effect of instability on the lives of children.
The data for this study are derived from the Social Statistical Database (SSD) of Statistics Netherlands. We use the SSD Millennium Birth Cohort, which contains all children born in the Netherlands in the year 2000.

While interest in the consequences of childhood poverty is longstanding, quantitative research on the attainment of children of poor immigrants is limited. This study focuses on the shorter- and longer-term consequences of poverty for the employment outcomes of the youths of immigrants in Canada using data from the Youth in Transition Survey Cohort A, a longitudinal survey of high school students aged 15 in 2000. The analysis finds growing up in poor families reduces the probability of employment during the school year for the youths of immigrants as well as non-immigrants. Such negative impacts of family poverty exist, independent of parental human capital, for the youths of immigrants but do not persist for a longer period. Moreover, while poverty has a greater negative impact on the employment of youths of immigrants than their non-immigrant counterparts, the negative impact of poverty diminishes once their migration-related characteristics are adjusted. Further, once employed, the youths of poor immigrants work longer hours and more intensely than their non-poor counterparts. These findings suggest poverty during adolescence influences the employment outcomes of youths of immigrants in a complex way, which underscores the importance of focusing on this select population.