PARENTAL RESOURCES AND CHILD WELLBEING

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The overall aim of this project is to study how parental resources affect children's wellbeing, as measured by children's health status and their cognitive, social, and emotional development. Our approach will be to examine how three broadly defined aspects of parental resources - economic status, family structure, and parental health (both mental and physical) - are related to each other. We will then examine how these parental resources affect the quality of parenting (discipline, warmth, supervision, and cognitive stimulation) and material resources (e.g., home learning materials, food security, neighborhood safety, and access to medical care) that children receive. Finally we will define how all of these "inputs," in turn, affect children's outcomes. As a specific "case study" we will study the determinants of childhood obesity, a preventable child health outcome that is the precursor of adult obesity. The study will utilize newly collected data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a new survey that follows birth cohorts of 3,675 children born to unwed parents, and 1,125 children born to married parents, from twenty US cities in fifteen states, from birth to age four. A key advantage of this survey is that it tracks and collects information from fathers, including those who do not live with their children. Using the Fragile Families data, we will be able to study the role of fathers in children's health and developmental outcomes. The Fragile Families data will be supplemented with data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Health Interview Survey. The results of this research will provide valuable information on the determinants of children's wellbeing, and the mechanisms through which parental resources affect children's outcomes.