Closing the Opportunity Gap for Young Children (2023) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 331-353
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FIGURE 7-1 Hypothesized pathways between parents' job quality and children's health and development. SOURCE: Adapted from Joshi et al., 2020.
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. In addition, more consistent work schedules and higher-quality jobs can increase options for many families to access higher-quality schools through school choice programs when their neighborhood school is underperforming, especially when those programs require families to provide transportation and child care (Sandstrom, 2015; Chingos & Blagg, 2017; McShane & Shaw, 2020; Collier, 2021)
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. Growing wage inequality and declining job quality mean lower access to resources for lower- and middle-income families, in turn widening parental job–related opportunity gaps for children.
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. To the extent that Black, Hispanic, and immigrant families have higher exposure to poor job quality, they experience greater opportunity gaps in resources to invest in children, which in turn contributes to racial/ethnic disparities in children's health (Burgard & Lin, 2013)
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As discussed previously, structural changes in the economy that create opportunity gaps for children include persistently low wage growth, nonstandard work schedules demanded by a 24/7 economy, and employers' unstable scheduling practices. The disparate negative effects of the economic crises associated with the COVID-19 pandemic on Black, Hispanic, and immigrant working families highlighted the need for more comprehensive policy interventions.
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. This evidence suggests that expansion of minimum wage provisions could improve parents' job quality, increase the resources available to children, and reduce racial/ethnic child opportunity gaps.
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Using a variety of modeling techniques that minimize selection bias, research has established that unemployed workers receiving unemployment insurance benefits have better self-rated health and mental health compared with workers who do not receive these benefits (O'Campo et al., 2015; Cylus & Avendano, 2017)
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Without access to unemployment insurance to mitigate the economic and health effects of job loss, particularly during recessions, the risk of downward family economic mobility increases, potentially widening child opportunity gaps. One study found that only one-third of children with an unemployed parent lived in families that received unemployment insurance (Issacs, 2013)
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. Given the greater barriers to access to unemployment insurance faced by Black, Hispanic, and immigrant workers, these policy improvements have the potential to help close racial/ethnic and income-based opportunity gaps.
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. However, children in immigrant families, who are largely Hispanic, are exposed to particularly large income-based opportunity gaps due to their exclusion from safety net programs; thus children in noncitizen families have much higher poverty rates compared with other children, yet they are excluded from the EITC even when they are U.S.
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While there is strong evidence of the health impacts of paid family and medical leave, scheduling laws are more recent. Emerging research evidence on scheduling laws shows some effects on workers' health but no spillover effects on parenting or child health.
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. Since the committee's focus is on identifying opportunity gaps in job quality that affect children's resources and well-being, we summarize two approaches that have been evaluated using experimental or quasi-experimental designs and that showed positive impacts on employment and earnings, as well as health and well-being.1 The first approach to improving parents' job quality is based on supplementing low-wage full-time jobs and providing parents with support to help maintain their employment.
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. An employment-focused approach that does not provide child care and other benefits and supports for parents' emotional and psychological well-being may therefore be insufficient to improve parents' job quality and will not address opportunity gaps, particularly for children living in families with the lowest incomes.
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One of the above sectoral training programs, Project Quest, is particularly relevant to reducing opportunity gaps associated with parents' jobs, since more than 70% of participants had children at program entry. This program's impact on annual earnings was found to be much higher for participants who had at least one child under 18 compared with those who had no children (Roder & Elliot, 2019)
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. Designed to increase the stability and predictability of work schedules, the Stable Scheduling Study included two group-randomized controlled trials conducted in the retail sector (clothing stores)
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, followed by well-resourced, high-quality elementary experiences, has the potential to bridge opportunity gaps associated with children's academic and learning outcomes in both the short and long terms (Pearman et al., 2019; Cascio, 2021; Bailey, Sun, & Timpe, 2022)
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Research suggests that a new system, based in a core set of standards informed and driven by closing opportunity gaps, might include structurally safe and healthy learning spaces; low teacher:student ratios and small class sizes; inclusion of children with disabilities with fully funded and appropriate services and supports; culturally affirming and research-based pedagogy and instruction; bilingual learning (i.e., learning both in English and in the home language) for dual language learners; a supported, competent, and fairly compensated workforce; and attention to bias and racism in adult–child relationships and interactions.
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, Head Start, or IDEA. But accountability for failing to bridge opportunity gaps has been weak.
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. ADDRESSING OPPORTUNITY GAPS AND OUTCOMES IN PHYSICAL HEALTH Disparities in health outcomes often begin in early childhood as the result of a number of factors previously described in this report.
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Additionally, there is evidence that increased income for parents results in a reduction in adverse health outcomes and birth experiences. Studies looking at raising minimum wages and expanding the EITC have shown that these policies produce significant reductions in infant mortality and increased birthweights.
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. Evidence shows that although state Medicaid expansions are not significantly associated with improved birth outcomes in the overall population, the expansions do help reduce racial disparities in preterm birth and infant mortality, as well as both overall rates of and racial disparities in maternal mortality (Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center, 2021)
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. More recent research has shown that the loss of SNAP benefits for those who exceed the income threshold results in worse caregiver and child health, and also increases the incidence of food insecurity (Ettinger de Cuba et al., 2019)
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. A 2022 study of the implementation of the CEP in Oregon found that the program improved student nutrition, reduced administrative burden, and had a statistically significant effect on reducing student suspension rates by the third year of implementation.
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