Panel:
Thinking Big: How Macro-Level Factors and Policies Affect Children
(Family and Child Policy)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
In general, governments adopt social welfare programs or interventions with several policy goals in mind. These might include efforts to help families financially, reduce strain, discourage engagement in harmful practices, and promote child well-being more broadly. When evaluating these programs or interventions, it is important to understand if and to what extent the key policy objectives were achieved, but it is also imperative to understand if our interventions lead to any unintended or negative consequences.
This panel will bring together several disciplines (public policy, sociology, and economics, public health, child welfare expertise, and epidemiology) and examine three different kinds of interventions that are designed to promote child well-being. East, Sandler, and Simon will use the SIPP to ask if family or parent exposure to unemployment insurance in childhood improves a child’s future human capital and labor market outcomes, and in particular, how does long-term exposure matter. Heflin, Bullinger, and Raissian will use the NCANDS: Child file data to determine if SNAP benefits, meant to alleviate food insecurity in a home, also alleviate the stressors that lead to child maltreatment or if the SNAP benefits introduce opportunities for conflict within households, which could in-turn lead to an up-tick of child maltreatment. And finally, the Mackenzie-Liu paper will explore if an effort to curb opioid addiction might have accidentally transitioned drug users to heroin, thereby increasing child maltreatment and stimulating child removals.
The nuanced analyses provided by each paper is valuable as a stand-alone contribution, but we believe looking collectively at these interventions and policies in a panel will allow for a stronger conference conversation. For example, the East et al. and Heflin et al. papers will both explore programs targeted at relieving economic stress in times of financial hardship. Are there lessons that we can learn about these programs more broadly, when they are discussed more broadly? The Mackenzie-Liu and Heflin et al. papers explore more traditional child welfare outcomes, while the East et al paper will explore more outcomes surrounding earning and children’s future labor market outcomes, which will push the conversation to explore how and when we measure the impact of interventions.
Finally, our discussants both have the ability to discuss the paper’s in terms of their academic merit and make comments to improve their rigor and scholarship contributions, but they can also make comments about policy implementation and practical applications. We think these comments are especially valuable in improving the quality of our studies, and once complete, translating this work to a variety of audiences.
