Parental Acute Health Shocks and Children’s Short-Run Mental and Behavioral Outcomes: Evidence from MEPS

• In Event: Health Policy, Family Shocks, and Behavioral Responses Across the Life Course

Abstract

Parental health is a central determinant of family well-being, yet little is known about how sudden parental health shocks affect children in the short run. While a large literature documents the long-run consequences of adverse childhood experiences, far less attention has been paid to children’s immediate responses to acute parental illness or hospitalization. This paper examines how parental acute health shocks influence children’s short-run mental and behavioral outcomes in the United States.

I use data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), a nationally representative household panel that links parents and children and tracks detailed health care utilization over a two-year period. I define the main treatment as a broad parental acute health shock—non-routine inpatient hospitalization or emergency-related events—capturing disruptions that plausibly affect caregiving capacity and household stability. This broader definition improves statistical power and aligns with the mechanisms through which children may be affected.

The analysis focuses on three categories of child outcomes: (1) functional and behavioral health, measured using the Columbia Impairment Scale (CIS); (2) school disruption, proxied by missed school days; and (3) mental health care utilization. I estimate exposure-based models comparing children whose parents experience shocks during the panel to those in non-shocked households, complemented by reweighting methods to improve balance on observables. I further exploit within-panel timing variation through before-after and event-time specifications as supporting evidence.

Preliminary results using pooled MEPS data (2019–2023) show that parental inpatient shocks are associated with economically and statistically significant increases in children’s behavioral impairment. Exposure to a parental hospitalization raises CIS scores by approximately 0.24 standard deviations, with consistent findings across alternative outcome specifications, including binary and count measures. Evidence also suggests a dose–response relationship: more severe shocks, proxied by longer hospital stays, are associated with larger adverse effects on children’s outcomes. These results are robust to alternative definitions of acute health events, including emergency room visits.

This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it provides new evidence on the short-run spillover effects of parental health shocks on children. Second, it expands measurement beyond formal mental health care use to include more responsive indicators of child well-being. Third, it develops an empirical framework tailored to the strengths and limitations of short household panels. Overall, the findings highlight the immediate vulnerability of children to sudden parental health disruptions and underscore the importance of policies that support families during acute health crises

Author

• Yuhua Chen, Georgia State University
  Presenting Author