Variation in Parental Displacement Experiences and Children’s Educational Outcomes: Single Mothers’ Post-Displacement Unemployment

• In Event: 207 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 24. Disruptions and Discipline

Abstract

Parental job displacement can lead to a period of unemployment, but the length of unemployment following a displacement varies substantially, in some cases not occurring at all. Brand and Simon Thomas (2014) find significant decreases in high school completion and college attendance as well as increases in depression among children whose single mothers were displaced. This study examines variations in single mothers’ job displacement length, using logistic and OLS regression models, and looks at the effects on children’s educational outcomes, using propensity score matching models, to move toward a more nuanced understanding of the effects of parental job displacement on children’s educational outcomes. The National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (NLSY 1979) is used in combination with the Child-Mother File to find that the time that single mothers spend unemployed following a job displacement does not appear to affect their children’s educational choices, beyond the shock of the displacement event itself, other than increasing the chance of part-time college enrollment. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Author

• Juli Simon Thomas, University of California-Los Angeles