Lone parents' employment policy and adolescents' socioemotional development

Quasi-experimental evidence from a UK reform

Bibliographic Data

ID4592762
AuthorsLiming Li (0000-0001-5492-432X, King's College London, corresponding author), Mauricio Avendaño (0000-0002-7295-2911, Centre universitaire de médecine générale et santé publique, Lausanne)
Year2023
Volume320
Pages115754
Publication date2023-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Science & Medicine (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0277-9536 • E-ISSN: 1873-5347
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115754
PMID36758496
OpenAlexW4318562065
LanguageEN
References cited56

Studies suggest that welfare-to-work programmes increase lone mother's employment, but their impact on child and adolescent socioemotional development is unclear. The lone parent obligation (LPO) reform introduced a requirement for lone mothers entitled to unconditional Income Support (IS) to seek paid work actively as a condition to receive benefits. We use data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study to examine the impact of work search requirements for lone parents on child and adolescent socioemotional development. We apply a difference-in-differences approach that exploits gradual changes from 2008 to 2017 in children's maximum eligibility age to receive IS and assess effects on child and adolescent Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) scores. We find that the LPO reform led to a ten-percentage point increase in lone mothers' employment but no change in the risk of family poverty. The reform led to a small but statistically significant increase in adolescents' SDQ scores, which indicated worse mental health and was largely driven by increased emotional problems. It also led to an increase in mothers' distress and poor self-rated health, and mothers' reports that time spent with children was insufficient. Our findings highlight the need to consider trade-offs between employment gains and child and adolescent socioemotional development in assessing the net impact of welfare-to-work policies targeting lone parents

Child poverty · Cohort study · Developmental psychology · Economic growth · Economics · Mental health · Millennium Cohort Study (United States · Political science · Poverty · Psychiatry · Social policy · Socioemotional selectivity theory · Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire · Welfare · Welfare reform · Employment and Welfare Studies · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Medicine · Psychology

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