Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Prior studies about how family income matters for children show that income effects are important but small; the strongest impacts occur in the preschool and early school years; and, the effects are more important for cognitive and school achievement and less so for social development (Berger, Paxson, & Waldfogel, 2009; Blau, 1999; Shea, 2000; Taylor, Dearing, & McCartney, 2004, Duncan et al., 2011). Moreover, family income operates through parents’ ability to provide a cognitive stimulating environment for their children, maternal depression, and spanking, respectively (Yeung et al., 2011).

However there are substantial gaps in this literature. First, despite using a variety of measures of family income, few studies highlight father’s earnings, which constitute the largest single source of income in two-parent families. The stagnation or decline of male earnings at or below the median and the enduring effects of the 2007-2009 recession on men’s wages have played large roles in the growth of working-poor and near-poor two-parent families over the last 40 years ( Mincy, Jethwani & Klempin, 2014). Yet we have little understanding of how changes in father’s earnings affect young children.

Second, prior studies have mostly focused on the 0-5 period, neglecting longer-term effects of income on children’s achievement at the transition to middle-school. Third, studies have focused on maternal investments, almost completely ignoring paternal investments of time. However, some studies show that children with more engaged fathers do better than children with less engaged fathers (Cabrera et al., 2014; Cabrera, et al., 2007; Adamsons & Johnson, 2013). Thus an untested mechanism is whether income matters for children because it affects the amount of time fathers spend with children. Lastly, the improved home environment may affect children’s outcomes through its effects on children’s language development early on (Forget-Dubois et al., 2009).

 We address these gaps by examining associations between paternal earnings over the first 3 years of the child’s life and achievement scores (in math and reading) as well as aggressive behavior at age 9. We test three specific pathways leading to the observed association between father’s earnings and children’s achievement. First, we test the investment model that fathers’ average earnings are associated with children’s development through their effects on the (mothers’ and fathers’) time and materials that parents spend on their children. Second, we test the family stress model that father’s earnings influence maternal stress, which in turn influences children’s outcomes. Third, we test whether the effects of fathers’ earnings on children’s achievement and behavior at age 9 can be explained by their influence children’s language skills at age 5.

Using five waves of Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N=4898), we construct a sample of children born to poor, near-poor and working class, two-parent families, from a variety of race and ethnic groups. Using OLS analysis of reduced form models and path analysis, we find significant, but small, associations between father’s earnings and math and reading achievement, which are mediating through parental investments in learning materials, maternal stress, positive discipline, and children’s cognitive development at age 5.