This project focuses on understanding the long term effects on children who grow up under conditions of economic distress. We will focus initially on establishing the long term health and labor market impacts of growing up during an economic downturn, and will then focus on understanding potential mechanisms that may operate through physical and mental health. The project emphasizes co-operative interdisciplinary exploration of the pathways by which economic resources affect child development, and will harness multiple datasets (such as the American Community Survey, the Medical Expenditure Survey, The Family Transitions Project and the California Families Project) multiple research methods, (such as linear probability analyses, "fixed effects" analyses, latent variable structural equation modeling) and multiple disciplinary perspectives represented by economics, psychology and sociology.
Given that the United States is in the process of slowly recovering from the largest recession since the Great Depression, this project will have broad impact through its clear policy relevance. While the impact of business cycles on adult outcomes is being thoroughly documented, we currently know very little about how they affect the well-being of children. It is natural to assume that the impacts of economic booms and busts must also spill over onto the next generation's long-term success, yet this is largely uncharted research territory. The project's intellectual impact lies in the development of a more holistic approach to understanding the connection between economic resources and child development. The disciplines of economics, psychology and sociology are currently attempting to understand this relationship from completely different angles and in nearly total isolation. The lack of interdisciplinary interaction has created disciplinary voids that produce incomplete understanding of the range of impacts children experience. The project will form a foundation for a network of researchers who are not simply informed about related inquiries that are taking place in other disciplines but who are able to fully incorporate that understanding into more comprehensive research approaches that ultimately yield deeper knowledge about the interrelated impacts of economic downturns. This network will include both faculty and graduate students, who will be trained through both direct immersion in the research projects, and intensive interdisciplinary mentoring and coursework. Finally, the project will enhance the infrastructure of research, as it will involve putting together a new historical employment series, which will be made publicly available to all interested researchers through the principal investigator's website. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.
