Lawrence M Berger
Biographic Data
| ID | 82009 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lawrence M Berger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lawrence M |
| FAMILY NAME | Berger |
| SIGNATURE | BERGER L M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7913-1059 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 81 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 953 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 81 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 19 |
Short-Term consequences of Parents’ criminal legal system involvement for Children’s academic performance
Uses longitudinal linked administrative data and multiple analytic approaches to assess associations between parent criminal legal involvement and children’s school test scores. • Children with parent CLS involvement are academically disadvantaged. • Associations between parent CLS involvement and children’s test scores are unlikely to be causal. • Children with non-carceral parent CLS involvement have similar test scores as children with an inca…
Can early universal preschool reduce socioeconomic inequalities in child development? The role of duration and intensity of preschool attendance in the French birth cohort, Elfe
High quality early childhood education and care programs can foster the development of cognitive and noncognitive skills. We estimate the effects of the duration of attending free universal preschool ( école maternelle ) in France between age 3 and 4 on children’s cognitive skills and global development, leveraging differences by birth month to identify plausibly exogenous variation in duration of preschool exposure. Using nationally representati…
Adjusting for Underreporting of Child Protective Services Involvement in the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study and Assessing Its Empirical Implications Through Illustrative Analyses of Youn…
Child protective services (CPS) involvement is common among American families; more than a third of all children and more than half of Black children experience at least one investigation by age 18. However, studying the causes and consequences of CPS involvement is challenging. National data on children involved with CPS lack a counterfactual group, and state-level administrative data often miss key family and child factors. The Future of Famili…
Unsecured Credit and the Social Safety Net in U.S. States
Low-income households in the United States draw on public and private resources to manage economic risk. Cross-national scholars describe a “credit–welfare state tradeoff” where credit markets become particularly important when state benefits are less supportive. The United States is frequently highlighted in this regard, with its often-inadequate market-first safety net. Both credit markets and the safety net are, however, highly unequal and seg…
“First Phone Call Is Usually Family”: Informal Borrowing Among Low‐Income Debtors
Objective We examine experiences of informal borrowing (from friends and family) among a sample of low‐income debtors. Background Low‐income populations often take on debt to cope with economic insecurity. However, most research on debt focuses on formal market debts (e.g., credit cards) even though research on informal exchanges identifies significant borrowing between family and friends. We ask how low‐income debtors navigate these informal cre…
Racism and racial disparities in Child Protective Services involvement: How can government respond
Black–White differences in Child Protective Services involvement: Evidence on the role of differential ‘risk’
Estimating the Antipoverty Effects of Social Security Programs for Children in Multigenerational Families
Debt Strain and Child Protective Services Involvement
Research has identified a likely causal relation of economic precarity with both child maltreatment and child protective service (CPS) involvement. Yet, little is known about the relation between credit use (debt) and CPS involvement despite credit becoming an increasingly normative aspect of attempting to manage economic precarity for low-income families. We link individual-level longitudinal data on credit use to administrative records on CPS i…
Maternal contact with Child Protective Services around childbirth and postpartum contraception
Sharing care and sharing costs? Child support and child-related expense-sharing post-separation in Finland and Wisconsin, US
This study analyzes the associations between post-separation child living arrangements and child support outcomes and expense sharing in two contrasting welfare states: Finland and the United States (Wisconsin). The extent to which parents share the economic responsibility of the child after separation varies across countries. As shared care arrangements become more prevalent, traditional child support arrangements may become less common. Survey …
Defining the ‘Resource Unit’ for Poverty Measurement in Complex Contemporary Households: It’s Complicated
Inequality in high-cost borrowing and unemployment insurance generosity in US states during the Covid-19 pandemic
Lower-Income Nonresident Fathers' Self-Perceptions About Their Parenting Quality and Relationships With Children
Research on fathering has substantially increased but we still know relatively little about whether and how fathers' own perspectives on their parenting differ across a variety of family situations. We estimate associations between nonresident fathers' family types and nonresident fathers' perceptions of the quality of their parenting and their relationships with their children, using data from the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Dem…
Maternal satisfaction with joint and sole child physical placement arrangements following separation in Wisconsin and Finland
Families (and sometimes courts) make important decisions regarding child physical custody arrangements post‐separation, and shared parenting arrangements are increasingly common in most developed countries. Shared arrangements may be differentially associated with parental satisfaction, and these associations may vary across countries. Using data from surveys of separated mothers in Wisconsin and Finland, the present study explores this possibili…
Quasi‐experimental evidence on the employment effects of the 2021 fully refundable monthly child tax credit
In this paper, we estimate the impact on employment of the 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion, which increased the size of the benefit, made it fully refundable, and allowed for monthly receipt. We harness exogenous variation in monthly CTC eligibility by comparing employment among caregivers to that of childless workers before and after monthly payments commenced on July 15, 2021, using event study and difference‐in‐differences frameworks. Ou…
Intra-year employment instability and economic well-being among urban households: Mitigating effects of the social safety net
The Effects of Child Poverty Reductions on Child Protective Services Involvement
In this study, we use microsimulation methods to estimate the reduction in child protective services (CPS) involvement resulting from implementation of three of the policy packages from a recent National Academy of Sciences proposal to reduce child poverty, including the introduction of a child allowance and expansions to the earned income tax credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the federal minimum wage. We find that the po…
Noncustodial parents, instrumental networks, and child support compliance
Preventing child protective services system involvement by asking families what they need: Findings from a multi-site RCT of the community response program (CRP)
The Effects of Opioid Use during Pregnancy on Infant Health and Well-Being
We estimate the causal effects of infants’ exposure to opioids in utero on their health at birth and on the likelihood that their parents will be the subjects of subsequent reports to child protective services. We use administrative data on 259,723 infants born to 176,224 mothers enrolled in Medicaid between 2010 and 2019. Results suggest that an infant experiencing withdrawal symptoms after birth or needing admission to intensive care is strongl…
The Impact of Center-Based Childcare Attendance on Early Child Development: Evidence From the French Elfe Cohort
Proponents of early childhood education and care programs cite evidence that high-quality center-based childcare has positive impacts on child development, particularly for disadvantaged children. However, much of this evidence stems from randomized evaluations of small-scale intensive programs based in the United States and other Anglo/English-speaking countries. Evidence is more mixed with respect to widespread or universal center-based childca…
Barriers to Formal Child Support Payment
Child support income has the potential to substantially reduce economic hardship for children living apart from their fathers, but many fathers have limited earnings and are unable to pay the support they owe. Understanding their employment barriers has implications for their child support payments and for child support agency services. Using data from a survey of nearly 3,800 noncustodial fathers in seven states, we find that more than half of t…
The Contemporary U.S. Child Welfare System(s): Overview and Key Challenges
This volume of The ANNALS aims to increase awareness among scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners of the size, scope, and functions of child welfare services in the United States. We aim to promote a wider understanding of the broad impacts of child welfare policies and point to ways in which child welfare services can be better incorporated into cross-cutting social policy debates. The articles in this volume offer concrete recommendations f…
Family Policy and Complex Contemporary Families: A Decade in Review and Implications for the Next Decade of Research and Policy Practice
Prior Journal of Marriage and Family decade‐in‐review articles have grappled with the definition and role of family policy for research and policy practice while emphasizing its value to both. In this article, we begin with a broad conceptualization of family policy that encompasses actions intended to achieve explicitly stated goals for families (explicit policies) and those that affect families without an explicitly stated goal for doing so (im…
Maternity Leave, Early Maternal Employment and Child Health and Development in the US
This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to explore links between mothers' returns to work within 12 weeks of giving birth and health and developmental outcomes for their children. OLS models and propensity score matching methods are utilised to account for selection bias. Considerable associations between early returns to work and children's outcomes are found suggesting causal relationships between early returns to wo…
Family Structure States and Transitions: Associations With Children's Well-Being During Middle Childhood
Using longitudinal data from the Maternal and Child Supplement of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,862) and Hierarchical Linear Models, we estimated associations of family structure states and transitions with children's achievement and behavior trajectories during middle childhood. Results suggest that residing in a single-mother family was associated with small increases in behavior problems and decreases in achievement and that…
Parenting Practices of Resident Fathers: The Role of Marital and Biological Ties
This paper uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N= 2,098) to examine differences in the parenting practices of four types of resident fathers, defined by their biological relationship to a focal child and their marital status with regard to the focal child's mother. Regression results suggest that biological fathers and social fathers (i.e., stepfathers or mothers' cohabiting partners) differ significantly, and in some u…
Income, family structure, and child maltreatment risk
Family Structure Transitions and Changes in Maternal Resources and Well-being
This article uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine whether family instability is associated with changes in perceived social support, material hardship, maternal depression, and parenting stress among mothers of young children. In addition to accounting for the number of transitions that a mother experiences during the first five years of her child’s life, we pay close attention to the type and timing of these t…
What Kids Get from Parents: Packages of Parental Involvement across Complex Family Forms
While demographers have continued to document the notable family changes that have occurred in recent decades, the nature of family functioning across diverse family forms is less well understood. In particular, we know little about the level and quality of parental investment that children receive across a range of contemporary family types. In this paper, we use data from a recent U.S. urban birth cohort to examine the 'package' of parental inv…
Maternity leave and the employment of new mothers in the United States
Risk and protective factors for child neglect during early childhood: A cross-study comparison
Maternal re-partnering and new-partner fertility: Associations with nonresident father investments in children
Socioeconomic Factors and Substandard Parenting
This article uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate the independent and interactive effects of income, family structure, and maternal work on measures of substandard parenting. Results from child fixed‐effects analyses suggest that children in mother‐partner families are more likely to be exposed to substandard parenting than children in mother‐father families. However, income plays a particularly strong protective r…
Income and child development
Do Welfare Sanctions Increase Child Protection System Involvement? A Cautious Answer
This study assesses the relationship between various types of welfare grant reductions and subsequent child maltreatment reports in a sample ($$N=1,260$$) of recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Results show that receipt of TANF sanctions increases the rate of having an investigation for neglect but does not bear a statistically significant relation to having an indicated report of neglect or abuse. Receipt of other types…
Family Policy and Complex Contemporary Families: A Decade in Review and Implications for the Next Decade of Research and Policy Practice
Prior Journal of Marriage and Family decade‐in‐review articles have grappled with the definition and role of family policy for research and policy practice while emphasizing its value to both. In this article, we begin with a broad conceptualization of family policy that encompasses actions intended to achieve explicitly stated goals for families (explicit policies) and those that affect families without an explicitly stated goal for doing so (im…
Examining racial disproportionality in child protective services case decisions
Child Support and Young Children’s Development
This study examines the effects of nonresident fathers' provision of formal and informal cash child support on children's cognitive skills and behavior at 5 years of age. Taking advantage of the panel structure of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we control for child outcomes at age 3 and a rich set of child and family sociodemographic and psychosocial characteristics. We find that fathers' provision of informal cash support (but n…
Young Disadvantaged Men as Fathers
This article reviews current theory and empirical evidence regarding young disadvantaged men's involvement with children. It first chronicles the major theoretical perspectives on fathers' involvement among resident (married and cohabiting) biological fathers, resident social fathers (unrelated romantic partners of children's mothers), and nonresident biological fathers. Second, it provides a brief overview of the current and historical role of t…
Is Student Loan Debt Discouraging Homeownership among Young Adults
Amid concern that rising student loan debt has social and economic consequences for young adults, many suggest that student loan debt is leading young adults to forgo home buying. However, there is little empirical evidence on this topic. In this study, we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to estimate associations of student loan debt with homeownership, mortgage amount, and home equity. We use a variety of methodologic…
Family Structure and Adolescent Physical Health, Behavior, and Emotional Well-Being
This study uses data from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine family structure's associations with adolescent physical health, behavior, and emotional well-being. Findings suggest that adolescents in most other family types tend to have poorer outcomes than those in two-biological-parent families. Adolescents living with their biological father but not their mother have similar outcomes to those livin…
Parental Substance Abuse and Child Well-Being: A Consideration of Parents' Gender and Coresidence
Parental substance abuse is associated with adverse health and developmental outcomes for children. Existing research, however, has not fully explored the relative magnitude of the associations between maternal, paternal, and both parents' substance abuse and child outcomes, nor has it examined these associations in regard to substance abuse among nonresident fathers. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study ( N = 3,027) to…
Permanency and the Educational and Economic Attainment of Former Foster Children in Early Adulthood
Foster children are at disproportionate risk of adverse outcomes throughout the life course. Public policy prioritizes permanency (exiting foster care through reunification with birth parents, adoption, or legal guardianship) to promote foster youths' healthy development and well-being, but little empirical evidence indicates that permanency, including its most preferred form-reunification-promotes positive outcomes. Using multi-system, statewide…
Introduction to the special issue on the economic causes and consequences of child maltreatment
Family Structure Experiences and Child Socioemotional Development During the First Nine Years of Life: Examining Heterogeneity by Family Structure at Birth
A vast amount of literature has documented negative associations between family instability and child development, with the largest associations being in the socioemotional (behavioral) domain. Yet, prior work has paid limited attention to differentiating the role of the number, types, and sequencing of family transitions that children experience, as well as to understanding potential heterogeneity in these associations by family structure at bir…
Families at the Intersection of the Criminal Justice and Child Protective Services Systems
The prevalence of incarceration in the United States is increasingly well known. The prevalence of family involvement with child protective services (CPS) is less understood, though, and there is limited research examining links between incarceration and CPS involvement. Here, we describe the incidence and prevalence of incarceration and CPS involvement in the United States and outline reasons that the same individuals and families may be at risk…
First-year maternal employment and child outcomes: Differences across racial and ethnic groups
Assessing Parenting Behaviors across Racial Groups: Implications for the Child Welfare System
Black families are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system. This may in part result from racial bias in judgments made by those who report and investigate child maltreatment. However, little is known about how race influences judgments about parenting. This article relies on data from a population‐based survey to examine whether the race of interviewers, relative to the race of families they interview, influences parenting asse…
The Emotional and Intellectual Aspects of Protest Music: Implications for Community Organizing Education
Within the context of community organizing, protest songs have historically functioned to educate, motivate, and raise consciousness by affecting listeners both emotionally and intellectually. Such songs can be used in the classroom much as they have been used in practice: to simplify, concretize, and reinforce specific ideologies, and to foster group solidarity. Social work educators can add an emotional component to their classrooms and enhance…
Prenatal Cocaine Exposure: Long‐Run Effects and Policy Implications
In this article, we review the literature regarding prenatal cocaine exposure and child development. We then reexamine current child welfare policies in light of that literature, paying particular attention to laws that mandate reporting substance‐exposed newborns and substance use during pregnancy as well as policies that view such reports as prima facie evidence of child maltreatment. Finally, we reassess the utility of such policies, given our…
Estimating the Benefits and Costs of a Universal Substance Abuse Screening and Treatment Referral Policy for Pregnant Women
Prenatal substance exposure poses a significant public health problem in terms of both its economic costs to society and the health and development of those children affected. While substance abusing pregnant women and their children could benefit from early identification and appropriate interventions, drug testing of infants is controversial, and there is currently no national policy regarding the drug testing of infants, nor substance abuse sc…
Maternity leave and the employment of new mothers in the United States
Income, family structure, and child maltreatment risk
Income, family characteristics, and physical violence toward children
Socioeconomic Status, Parenting Knowledge and Behaviors, and Perceived Maltreatment of Young Low‐Birth‐Weight Children
This article estimates the relative effects of socioeconomic status and parenting knowledge and behaviors on whether nurse practitioners perceive a family as being suspected of or confirmed for child maltreatment during the first 3 years of a child’s life. Results suggest that both socioeconomic status and parenting characteristics contribute substantially to perceived maltreatment. While parenting knowledge and behaviors appear to have a larger …
Assessing Parenting Behaviors across Racial Groups: Implications for the Child Welfare System
Black families are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system. This may in part result from racial bias in judgments made by those who report and investigate child maltreatment. However, little is known about how race influences judgments about parenting. This article relies on data from a population‐based survey to examine whether the race of interviewers, relative to the race of families they interview, influences parenting asse…
Maternity Leave, Early Maternal Employment and Child Health and Development in the US
This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to explore links between mothers' returns to work within 12 weeks of giving birth and health and developmental outcomes for their children. OLS models and propensity score matching methods are utilised to account for selection bias. Considerable associations between early returns to work and children's outcomes are found suggesting causal relationships between early returns to wo…
Special Reviewers
Children living out-of-home: Effects of family and environmental characteristics
Housing Assistance and Employment: How Far‐Reaching Are the Effects of Rental Subsidies
This article uses instrumental variables models and data from the National Survey of America’s Families to explore associations between rental housing assistance and employment among low‐income, single‐mother households in the United States. Results suggest that housing assistance has indirect effects on employment. These effects operate through the stability of housing residency. However, the analyses provide little evidence of direct associatio…
Family economic well-being following the 1996 welfare reform: Trend data from five non-experimental panel studies
How are children and families faring a decade after welfare reform? Evidence from five non-experimental panel studies
Do Welfare Sanctions Increase Child Protection System Involvement? A Cautious Answer
This study assesses the relationship between various types of welfare grant reductions and subsequent child maltreatment reports in a sample ($$N=1,260$$) of recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Results show that receipt of TANF sanctions increases the rate of having an investigation for neglect but does not bear a statistically significant relation to having an indicated report of neglect or abuse. Receipt of other types…
Socioeconomic Factors and Substandard Parenting
This article uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate the independent and interactive effects of income, family structure, and maternal work on measures of substandard parenting. Results from child fixed‐effects analyses suggest that children in mother‐partner families are more likely to be exposed to substandard parenting than children in mother‐father families. However, income plays a particularly strong protective r…
First-year maternal employment and child outcomes: Differences across racial and ethnic groups
Subsidized Housing and Household Hardship Among Low-Income Single-Mother Households
We investigate associations of housing assistance with housing and food-related hardship among low-income single-mother households using data from the National Survey of America's Families (N = 5,396). Results from instrumental variables models suggest that receipt of unit-based assistance, such as traditional public housing, is associated with a large decrease in rent burden and modest decreases in difficulty paying rent or utilities and residen…
Parenting Practices of Resident Fathers: The Role of Marital and Biological Ties
This paper uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N= 2,098) to examine differences in the parenting practices of four types of resident fathers, defined by their biological relationship to a focal child and their marital status with regard to the focal child's mother. Regression results suggest that biological fathers and social fathers (i.e., stepfathers or mothers' cohabiting partners) differ significantly, and in some u…
The Stability of Child Physical Placements Following Divorce: Descriptive Evidence From Wisconsin
This study uses administrative data from the Wisconsin Court Record Database, linked with survey data collected from mothers (n= 789) and fathers (n= 690), to describe the living arrangements of children with sole mother and shared child physical placement following parental divorce. Contrary to prior research, results provide little evidence that children with shared placement progressively spend less time in their father's care. We find that, o…
Estimating the “Impact” of Out-of-Home Placement on Child Well-Being: Approaching the Problem of Selection Bias
This study used data on 2,453 children aged 4–17 from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being and 5 analytic methods that adjust for selection factors to estimate the impact of out-of-home placement on children’s cognitive skills and behavior problems. Methods included ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions and residualized change, simple change, difference-in-difference, and fixed effects models. Models were estimated using the …
Income and child development
Parental Substance Abuse and Child Well-Being: A Consideration of Parents' Gender and Coresidence
Parental substance abuse is associated with adverse health and developmental outcomes for children. Existing research, however, has not fully explored the relative magnitude of the associations between maternal, paternal, and both parents' substance abuse and child outcomes, nor has it examined these associations in regard to substance abuse among nonresident fathers. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study ( N = 3,027) to…
Family Structure States and Transitions: Associations With Children's Well-Being During Middle Childhood
Using longitudinal data from the Maternal and Child Supplement of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,862) and Hierarchical Linear Models, we estimated associations of family structure states and transitions with children's achievement and behavior trajectories during middle childhood. Results suggest that residing in a single-mother family was associated with small increases in behavior problems and decreases in achievement and that…
Risk and protective factors for child neglect during early childhood: A cross-study comparison
Psychology (58 works) · Economics (43 works) · Medicine (42 works) · Developmental psychology (39 works) · Political science (32 works) · Demographic economics (31 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (26 works) · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving (26 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (25 works)