In 1997 the US established the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which offers payments to parents of dependent children to help defray child-rearing costs. In 2021 a temporary expansion to the CTC increased the size of payments, extended payments to families with low or no earnings, and distributed payments monthly instead of annually. Quasi-experimental evidence from the US and experimental evidence from low- and middle-income countries shows that moderate-to-large cash transfers improve subjective well-being and mental health. We estimated the CTC's expansion's effects on the subjective well-being and mental health of adult recipients, using data from the Understanding America Study, a nationally representative survey with more than 7,000 respondents and more than 2,700 unique respondents with children. We found no evidence that the CTC expansion had a significant short-term impact on measures of life satisfaction, anxiety, and depression symptomology among adult recipients. We speculate that the null effects may be due to the expansion's temporary nature.
Benjamin Glasner, Oscar Jiménez-Solomon, Sophie M. Collyer et al.
This study examined how organizations' faith identity, perceived organizational support for spiritual practices, and perceived ability to implement those practices predict wellbeing and professional quality of life among child welfare professionals. A total of 262 professionals working with vulnerable children and families completed standardized measures. Results indicated that branding as a faith-based organization alone did not predict well-being outcomes. However, perceived support for spiritual practices was associated with higher life satisfaction and lower burnout, and perceived ability to engage in spiritual practices predicted greater resilience and compassion satisfaction. Results also indicate that both religious commitment and perceived personal capacity to enact spiritual practices were associated with higher life satisfaction, resilience, compassion satisfaction and lower burnout. Findings highlight the importance of tangible, accessible spiritual support over formal organizational identity alone. They also suggest that the capacity to enact spiritual practices is essential to receiving their benefits.
Nicole Gilbertson Wilke, Jedd Medefind, Amanda R. Hiles Howard
Child welfare workers experience high levels of emotional and physical health problems stemming from their work. Though self-care among social services professionals is often encouraged, only recently have scholars begun to examine the self-care behaviors of child welfare workers. Despite plentiful research on the positive impact of self-care in reducing stress and burnout, limited research with child welfare workers shows only modest engagement in self-care practices. The present study used closed and open-ended survey responses to explore the type and frequency of self-care activities of a cohort of child welfare workers in Florida (n = 1006), and the impact of those activities on workers’ health and well-being, to include measures of burnout, secondary traumatic stress, job satisfaction, and work-life balance. Workers’ responses to open-ended survey questions were analyzed for themes across physical, emotional, and spiritual self-care domains. Chi-square tests determined differences in physical and emotional health ratings for workers who regularly engaged in self-care practices. Linear regression results showed that physical and motional self-care practices were associated with workers’ well-being. The overwhelming participation in self-care activities among child welfare workers and their impact on their health and well-being suggests the importance of an organizational approach to self-care and well-being in the workplace.
Lauren H. K. Stanley, Sophia Lutz, Beren Crim Sabuncu et al.
Abstract Objective Using a survey sample comprised of predominantly low‐income fathers of color, we examine whether child support debt (arrears) is associated with fathers' poor physical health, depression, and material hardship 9 years after their child's birth. Background About 70% of the $113.5 billion in outstanding arrears is held by men earning $10,000 or less, and an emerging body of research suggests arrears can negatively impact economically disadvantaged fathers of color and their families. Method Drawing on fathers' data from the first five waves of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS; N = 1614), we use multivariate regressions to assess the relationship between child support arrears and fathers' physical health, depression, and material hardship. We examine three different measures of arrears and assess the robustness of our results to model specifications that account for selection into arrears. Results Fathers with arrears and with higher arrears are more likely to experience poor physical health, depression, and material hardship, and these associations are more pronounced for fathers with high arrears burdens relative to their incomes. Results are robust to different measurements of arrears, who reports them (father or mother), and across model specifications (lagged dependent variables and inverse probability weighted analyses). Conclusion Disadvantaged fathers with arrears fare far worse physically, psychologically, and economically than those with no arrears. Findings from our study add to growing research documenting harmful consequences of child support debt and point to an important avenue through which ostensibly race neutral family policies may disadvantage low‐income men of color.
Nathan L. Robbins, Maureen R. Waller, Lenna Nepomnyaschy et al.
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused vast disruptions in family life for Canadian parents since early 2020. While numerous environmental stressors have been identified, including job loss and the demands of balancing work-life conflicts and at-home schooling, relatively less is known about the areas of family life parents are most concerned about and how these worries relate to well-being across the family system. Methods: = 29,831, 90.29% mothers, 57.40% Ontario residents) of children aged 0-14 were surveyed about their concerns related to child, parent, and family well-being in June 2020. Structural equation modelling was used to model the relationship between concerns about children, parenting, and the whole family, in association with several sociodemographic variables including child disability status, parent sex and education, job loss during COVID-19, and caregiver employment. Results: Parenting, child, and family concerns were positively correlated. Higher child and family concerns were reported by parents who had not attended university, those who had experienced employment loss or reduced hours, and families with all adults working outside the home. Parents of children with a disability reported higher concerns across all three domains: child, parenting, and family psychosocial well-being. Discussion: These results showcase distinct associations between social determinants of health and the types of worries caregivers exhibited across multiple areas of family life during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. Findings are interpreted in relation to clinical intervention and public policy targets for families.
Laura Colucci, Jackson Andrew Smith, Dillon Thomas Browne
Date Presented 04/06/19 Often, social indicators and caregiver perspective are used to define children’s well-being. This research, part of a multinational qualitative study, sought to understand how children ages 8 to 13 years conceptualize and experience their own well-being. Results revealed several indicators of well-being that fell into six domains: social connectedness, physical health, mastery and agency, safety and security, meaningful access to resources, and meaningful use of time through activity. Primary Author and Speaker: Barbara Brockevelt Additional Authors and Speakers: Shana Cerny
This article studies the importance of parental figures’ presence and family relationship quality in the construction of subjective child well-being, which is a protective factor for mental health. The BMSLSS (Brief Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale) questionnaire was applied to a random sample of 827 boys and girls enrolled in seventh grade, from the regions of Valparaíso, Concepción and Santiago, Chile. Participants of both genders reported high levels of well-being. The majority of them live in a single home (89.1%), with an average of three caregivers and two family economic providers. We also found positive and significant associations between the presence of parental figures and well-being. Family relationship quality is a variable which also significantly explains well-being levels when children live in a single house. These results suggest that it is necessary to explore intra-family attachment characteristics in order to identify and enhance family settings, as these have a significant effect on children’ well-being.
Valentina Vallejo-Correa, Juan Carlos Oyanedel, Francisca Pérez
Four recent reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine framed around the issues of poverty; mental, emotional, and behavioral health; adolescence; and young family health and education build on extensive recent evidence of what can be done to improve the health and well-being of children, youth, and families. We describe the process of generating the reports, briefly summarize each report's content, and identify crosscutting themes and recommendations. We also note how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlights major disparities and systemic problems addressed in the reports and heightens the relevance of their policy recommendations. The reports issue a unified, urgent call for measures with the potential to change the trajectory and outcomes for children and youth. Among these are basic income supports, other family supports, universal health care structured to meet family needs, and a broad national policy that prioritizes children and youth.
James M. Perrin, Greg J. Duncan, Ángela Díaz et al.
Importance: Improving child and adolescent well-being is a critical public health goal, yet monitoring of this measure at the national level remains limited. Composite indices aggregate existing indicators from population data sources, but these indices currently have weaknesses that may inhibit widespread use. Objective: To apply a novel, more child-centric index method to document changes in overall child and adolescent well-being in the US from 2000 to 2019, assess which states and racial and ethnic subpopulations experienced the greatest inequities in well-being, and identify the specific components associated with changes in the index over time. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional study applied the Child and Adolescent Thriving Index 1.0 to population-level data from 2000 to 2019 from several data sources. The area-based sampling frame for each of the component data sources allowed for nationally representative estimates for every year of the study period. The indices for every state and by race and ethnicity were also calculated. Due to the scope and breadth of the index components from across the life course, the Child and Adolescent Thriving Index 1.0 is intended to approximate the well-being of persons up to age 17 years. Data were analyzed from June 7, 2021, to March 17, 2022. Exposures: Time in years. Main Outcomes and Measures: The Child and Adolescent Thriving Index 1.0 is a weighted mean of 11 indicators intended to proxy well-being. The index comprises 11 components: non-low birth weight in neonates, preschool attendance in children aged 3 to 4 years, reading proficiency in fourth-grade students, math proficiency in eighth-grade students, food security in children younger than 18 years, general health status, nonobesity in high school students, nonsmoking in adolescents aged 12 to 17 years, non-marijuana use in adolescents aged 12 to 17 years, high school graduation in young adults aged 18 to 21 years, and nonarrest rate in children aged 10 to 17 years. The index ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 indicating minimum and 1 indicating maximum possible well-being at the population level. Results: The Child and Adolescent Thriving Index 1.0 was applied to data from 12 320 national, state, and racial and ethnic population-level estimates. Over the study period, the Child and Adolescent Thriving Index 1.0 score increased from 0.780 points in 2000 to 0.843 points in 2019. Despite some convergence in geographic and racial and ethnic disparities, inequities were still present in 2019 in the South (-0.021 points) compared with the Northeast and among American Indian or Alaska Native (-0.079 points), Black (-0.053 points), and Latinx (-0.047 points) children and adolescents compared with White youths. Index components most associated with the overall increases in index scores of well-being were high school graduation rate (+0.028 units) and nonsmoking in adolescents (+0.022 units), amounting to 80.6% of the total increase. Conclusions and Relevance: Results of this study suggest that child and adolescent well-being scores increased from 2000 to 2019, but substantial work remains to address persistent inequities across states and racial and ethnic populations. The newly developed Child and Adolescent Thriving Index 1.0 may be used in future work to evaluate which public policy types (economic, social, health care, housing, or education) are associated with higher levels of well-being.
Nathaniel W. Anderson, Daniel Eisenberg, Neal Halfon et al.
This project examines how state Child Tax Credit (CTC) policies affect labor supply and well-being among working-age adults with children in the United States.
Zachary Parolin, Rita Hamad, Justin S. White et al.
