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Child Health, Parental Well-Being, and the Social Safety Net
Achyuta Adhvaryu, N. Meltem Daysal, Snaebjorn Gunnsteinsson, Teresa Molina, Herdis Steingrimsdottir ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5The study looks at how families in Denmark are affected when a child is diagnosed with cancer. It uses national register data and compares affected families with matched unaffected families. Parents' income falls for 3-4 years after diagnosis. Fathers' incomes recover fully, but mothers' incomes stay about 3% lower 12 years later. Targeted government transfers to affected families helped smooth household income and did not reduce parents' work.
Key points
- Parental income declines substantially for 3-4 years after a child's cancer diagnosis.
- Fathers' incomes recover fully, but mothers' incomes remain 3% lower 12 years after diagnosis.
- Targeted safety net transfers play a crucial role in smoothing income for affected households.
- The transfers do not create work disincentive effects.
- Mental health and fertility effects are also observed, but are likely not what drives the economic impacts.
Limitations
Only the abstract is available, so sample sizes, effect sizes for the transfers and the detailed methods are not shown. The findings come from Denmark's welfare system and may not apply in countries with different safety nets. The abstract does not report outcomes for the children themselves beyond the diagnosis.
Abstract
How do parents contend with threats to the health and survival of their children? Can the social safety net mitigate negative economic effects through transfers to affected families? We study these questions by combining the universe of cancer diagnoses among Danish children with register data for affected and matched unaffected families. Parental income declines substantially for 3-4 years following a child’s cancer diagnosis. Fathers’ incomes recover fully, but mothers’ incomes remain 3% lower 12 years after diagnosis. Using a policy reform that introduced variation in the generosity of targeted safety net transfers to affected families, we show that such transfers play a crucial role in smoothing income for these households and, importantly, do not generate work disincentive effects. The pattern of results is most consistent with the idea that parents’ preferences to personally provide care for their children during the critical years following a severe health shock drive changes in labor supply and income. Mental health and fertility effects are also observed but are likely not mediators for impacts on economic outcomes.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
Problem
Loss of parental income and labour-market harm in families after a child is diagnosed with cancer
- Intervention
- Targeted safety net transfers to families of children with severe illness, studied using a policy reform that changed how generous the transfers were
- Population
- Danish families of all children diagnosed with cancer, compared with matched unaffected families, using national register data
Key finding
Transfers play a crucial role in smoothing income for affected households.
Adhvaryu et al. · Crossref · 1 Jan 2023