America’s World-Leading Rate of Child Welfare Investigation, and Other Interesting New Research
The Upside of Pregnancy Scares; Smartphones Are Eating Up A Lot of School Time; Maybe the Gender Revolution Hasn’t Actually Stalled (Among Married Couples); Is the Child Penalty Good, Actually? + more
Hello Everyone,
If I was going to choose a different name for this newsletter, I’d probably go with something like If I Understand Correctly. I should probably make a note of this somewhere on the About page, but I think it’s important for readers to keep in mind that while I am summarizing the findings of the studies included here to the best of my ability, there’s always a chance that I’m not, in fact, understanding them correctly. Academic research is complex. That’s why, when I cover it in my reported work, I almost invariably reach out to the authors for an interview, if only to double check that I’m interpreting their findings accurately. Unfortunately, there is no way I can do that for all the studies I include here.
Along those lines, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about studies that seem interesting but that I simply don’t have time to read at length. If it were me, I would prefer for the person collating this newsletter to just go ahead and alert me to such studies, even without much of an explanation—but…I’m me, a person who gets itchy when they discover an interesting study on fertility or childcare or whatever has escaped their notice. I worry that for more casual readers, including a study without a real summary of what it found and why it matters would just be confusing. Anyway, for the next few weeks, I’m going to include a section at the bottom I’m calling “Seems Interesting.” This will include very brief nods to studies that seem interesting but that I ultimately did not have time to thoroughly read. If people find that sort of unhelpful or just overwhelming, then I’ll nix it. So do let me know what you think!
America’s World-Leading Rate of Child Welfare Investigation
As I’ve previously covered in this newsletter and elsewhere, a shockingly high share of children in the U.S. come into contact with Child Protective Services. By one estimate, over a third of American kids (and half of Black kids) will experience a CPS investigation during their childhoods. I’ve long wanted to get a sense of how America stacks up against other countries on this point and was thus delighted to see this analysis that assessed various forms of contact with child welfare agencies (investigations, confirmed maltreatment, and placements into out-of-home care) for a bunch of countries “in the Global North.”
Among countries for which investigation data was available, the United States had the highest rate, reaching a high of 58.37 investigations per 1,000 children in 2017. (By comparison, there were under 10 confirmed cases of maltreatment for every 1,000 kids.) The U.S. isn’t at the top for any of the other measures of contact with child welfare agencies: it drops to fourth when it comes to confirmed maltreatment, behind New Zealand, Canada, and Australia. And when it comes to the prevalence of children in out-of-home care, the U.S. isn’t anywhere near the top. The highest rates of out-of-home-care are in Russia, Latvia and Lithuania and the Czech Republic, but Finland, Denmark, Hungary, Scotland, Poland, Australia, France and others all also outstrip the U.S. on this metric. So America investigates the hell out of its families, but doesn’t actually take kids away from their families at terribly high rates.
The Upside of Pregnancy Scares
The authors of this study wanted to know how a “pregnancy scare” impacts the likelihood of a couple breaking up. Previous research on pregnancy and relationship stability is somewhat mixed. And there are a couple different channels through which pregnancy might shape relationship stability: there’s the planning and discussion that it prompts, and then there’s the actual birth of the child. By investigating the relationship between a pregnancy scare and relationship dissolution, you can potentially disentangle these two pathways a bit, because the pregnancy scare would likely prompt discussion (or at least, some consideration of the future) without actually leading to the birth of the child. That said, apparently there is some research linking pregnancy scares to a heightened desire for a baby, which could influence the relationship as well.
It’s easy to see this going in both directions—if the scare prompts the couple to envision a future as parents together and they like what they see, then it might actually solidify the relationship. Then again, if you find you really don’t like the idea of raising a kid with your partner, then a pregnancy scare might sour you on the whole relationship—especially if it came with a side of baby fever.
Overall, the authors found that pregnancy scares were negatively associated with relationship dissolution, but that the link is strongest about a month out from the scare, a time period that perhaps lines up with the woman confirming that she is not actually pregnant. They also looked at how the association varied by relationship type. If I understand correctly, the inverse relationship between having a pregnancy scare and relationship dissolution is strongest among those in “serious” relationships—that is, not “casual,” but not married or cohabiting. Interestingly, they find that while the pregnancy scare is negatively associated with breaking up, as is actually getting pregnant, there was a positive association between having a kid and the relationship dissolving. So, one way to interpret these findings is that a pregnancy scare and even a pregnancy can strengthen a relationship, but then the trials of early parenting might challenge it (something something causation vs. correlation remember these are just associations la la la).
Smartphones Are Eating Up A Lot of School Time
There’s been a whole bunch of concern about smartphones in schools over the past year or so. But how much school time are smartphones actually eating up? According to this study, which used “passive sensing” (no clue what that means) to analyze adolescent smartphone use, teens are spending an average of 1.5 hours on their smartphones during the school day. This accounts for about 27% of their total 24-hour phone use (5.59 hours). The median adolescent is on their phone for 66 minutes of the school day, “primarily using messaging and social media.” That’s actually a bit higher than the findings of a previous study, which estimated a median adolescent-school-smartphone-time of 43 minutes. About a quarter of teens spent more than 2 hours of school time on their phones. We’re talking just smartphone use here—it’s not including time on school issued tablets or laptops.
Maybe the Gender Revolution Hasn’t Actually Stalled (Among Married Couples, At Least)
According to some, America’s gender revolution has stalled. Women haven’t made much progress in the labor market since the 1990s, and men’s involvement in the domestic realm isn’t budging much. This study tried to bring a bit more nuance to the state of gender progress by looking in more detail at the evolution of the gender housework gap among married Americans between 2003 and 2023. To do so, they distinguished between “core and traditionally ‘feminine’ tasks such as cooking and cleaning” and “occasional and traditionally ‘masculine’ tasks such as repairs and yard work,” as well as shopping and, for married parents, childcare.
For married women, total housework declined by about an hour, as did core housework, particularly house cleaning and laundry. Cooking time actually increased. Occasional housework didn’t really change, but shopping time declined. For mothers, childcare (and I’m pretty sure this is measuring “primary” or active childcare time—not “secondary” childcare, in which you are supervising kids while doing other stuff) actually rose a bit. For married men, there isn’t a ton of progress in the aggregate: their total housework time remained stable at about 10.0 hours per week until about 2019 before shooting up to 11.6 hours during the pandemic and then settling at 11.2 hours post-pandemic. But the meh progress on total housework masks the fact that married men’s core housework increased pretty steadily over the time period, from 3.5 hours in 2003 to 5.6 hours in 2023. That increase was partially offset by a decline in more traditionally masculine “occasional” housework. Male shopping time didn’t change much, at least in the aggregate. For married fathers, childcare time rose from 6.9 to 8.3 hours.
All told, the ratio of women’s to men’s housework hours fell from 1.8 in 2003 to 1.6 in 2023. But progress on the gender gap in “core” task time was more substantial, falling from 4.2 to 2.5. The gender gaps in shopping and occasional housework also declined a bit. The patterns were roughly similar if you narrow the analysis to married parents. And while mothers and fathers increased childcare time, the gender gap in childcare shrank a little bit, though the shift wasn’t significant.
Theoretically, these shifts could be due simply to compositional changes—that is, shifts in the population of people who are getting married. In other words, it could be that married women aren’t really changing their behavior, but that the population of married women is increasingly dominated by highly educated, higher earning women who perhaps due less housework. Looking into this, the authors found that the reduction in total and core housework for women was driven almost entirely by compositional changes, primarily increased earnings and education. But when it came to married men, the increase in total and core housework was largely “unexplained” by such factors. The authors take this as possible evidence of real progress. As men increasingly integrate “core” housework into their daily routines, “what was historically viewed as ‘women’s work’ in the home may increasingly be recognized as gender-neutral work.”
Is the Child Penalty Good, Actually?
Generally, when people discuss the child penalty—the dip in employment and earnings that mothers but not fathers experience following the birth of their first child—they talk about it as a bad thing. But can the child penalty be considered a privilege of sorts? According to this study, which explored how divorce impacts the child penalty, the answer is in at least one sense yes.
(One thing to keep in mind: previous research has found that the relationship between marital status and child penalties varies by country. In the U.S., married women generally have a greater child penalty than unmarried women. But in Denmark, it’s actually the opposite. This difference comes down to differences in welfare structure and generosity: in America, single mothers are forced to work.)
The main takeaway of this particular analysis, which is based in New Zealand and compares the child penalties of married and divorced women (rather than unmarried women, which would include those who were never married in the first place), is that “whereas married women have an employment penalty of 32%, for mothers who get divorced within seven years of the child’s birth it is about 5% and is indistinguishable from that of fathers.” When it comes to earnings, the penalty among married moms is 41%, compared to 13% among divorcees.
The authors do a bunch of analysis to tease out what’s driving this difference, investigating three possible mechanisms: heightened economic need among divorcees (which would push them to work more), lower subsequent fertility among divorcees (which would reduce further impact of childbearing on employment), and differences in values between married women and divorcees (which might differentially shape their career decisions). Long story short, most of the evidence points to economic need as the culprit. Divorcees are much more likely to take-up “hardship benefits” than married women, and tend to sit lower on the earnings spectrum, for example. The authors rule out the “subsequent fertility” hypothesis by comparing penalties between married and divorced mothers of one, which is similar to the pattern more broadly. And an analysis of norms shows little difference in “gender progressivity between married and divorced women.” So divorced moms (in New Zealand, at least) have a smaller child penalty because they can’t afford not to work!
Seems Interesting*
The Housing Theory of the Baby Boom
This study provides some evidence that the adoption of “government-backed mortgages” partially explains the mid-20th century Baby Boom. According to their calculations, FHA and VA mortgage insurance programs “led to 3 million additional births from 1935-1957, roughly 10 percent of the excess births in the baby boom.” They find no impact of these mortgages on births for nonwhite women, which tracks given that lending was super discriminatory.
The Child Penalty in Entrepreneurship
For another angle on the child penalty, this study looks at the performance of female-owned and male-owned businesses following the birth of the entrepreneur’s first child. Spoiler alert, profits plummet for the female businesses and don’t budge much for the male ones. “Childbirth is associated with a 20-30% decline in business profits in the years that follow the birth of a child, while for men the penalty is economically small and statistically insignificant.” Female businesses tend to “shrink in size” and are more likely to be sold post-childbirth. Seems like the decline is largely explained by changes in “effort”—that is, changes in work hours among female entrepreneurs—rather than pre-existing performance issues or discrimination from clients.
What Happened When Denmark Prevented Immigrants from Marrying
Apparently in 2002, Denmark passed a law that made it harder for people living in Denmark to marry someone from outside the EU. This was a big deal for first and second generation immigrants from outside the EU, the vast majority of whom married people from their parents’ home countries. (I gather the reform was intended to “reduce arranged marriages between an immigrant in Denmark and a spouse from their origin country.”) This study looked at how the reform impacted marriage, fertility, education and labor market outcomes among such immigrants. “Unsurprisingly, when the marriage market became constrained, women’s marriage probability declined, their marriage age increased, and their relationship behavior changed. Nonmarital cohabitation increased, women seemingly shifted their focus to the national marriage market, and fertility transitions were delayed. Lastly, educational length increased, with no indication of that increased education translating into a stronger labor market attachment.” So…mission accomplished?
The Returns to Universal Pre-K
This study investigated how enrollment in a universal pre-k in Connecticut impacted parents’ labor market outcomes, educational expenditures, and children’s academic performance. Didn’t have much impact on academic outcomes (although there appear to be some interesting differential impacts by socioeconomic status), but led to a pretty substantial bump in earnings for the parents, particularly middle income ones.
*Again, kinda just skimmed these.
(Just read the top paragraph)
You should have a podcast! Where you interview authors of studies that you find interesting. I would totally listen to that. And love the naming idea (If I Understand Correctly). Just a thought!
the family in your photo clearly deserves to be investigated; they have cut off the one son's legs!