CPI 2012 New Scholars Grant Competition Winners

Jennifer Augustine, Rice University

Fertility, Schooling, and the Transmission of Human Capital

The goal of this project is to examine whether mothers who secure higher education after having children can assist their children as much as those who secure higher education earlier in their lifecourse. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the study has three main objectives:

1. to describe historical trends in the background characteristics of mothers who return to school (taking into account the type of school attended and the type of degrees secured);
2. to estimate whether the link between maternal education and children’s academic outcomes is weaker among women who acquired their schooling post-fertility; and
3. to examine whether the effects of such post-fertility schooling (on children’s outcomes) are changing over time.

Claudia Geist, University of Utah

Precarious Plans? Examining the Impact of Economic Circumstances on Family Plans of Young Men and Women in the United States

As the economic downturn continues to play out, it’s important to assess whether it’s affecting family plans. This project addresses three questions:

1. How are the family formation plans of young adults affected by changes in their economic circumstances?
2. To what extent does the effect of negative economic change affect men’s and women’s plans for children and marriage differently?
3. Do the effects of economic circumstances on family plans vary by level of education?

These questions will be examined using the Transition to Adulthood Study (TAS), which is a part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and its Child Development Supplement (CDS).

Margot Jackson, Brown University

Are WIC and School Meal Programs Effectively Reaching Those in Need? Trends in Children’s Early and Continuous Use of Federal Nutritional Policy

Using longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), this research will examine whether children's exposure to nutritional programs has remained steady or increased as need has increased during the Great Recession. Three programs form the basis of the investigation: the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), the National School Breakfast Program (SBP), and the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). A primary goal of the analysis is to use individual-level data to not only identify trends in participation, but to examine whether increases in participation are limited to just some groups of eligible mothers and children.

Sheela Kennedy, Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota

Child Economic Well-being, Family Structure, and the Safety Net during the Great Recession

Using improved poverty measures, this research will measure the impact of the Great Recession on child poverty and evaluate the effectiveness of government antipoverty programs for married, cohabiting, and single-parent families. Using the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey and the Census Bureau’s Research Experimental Poverty files, this project will provide improved estimates of child poverty between 2006 and 2010 and assess how well the safety net has performed for these three family types.

Fabian T. Pfeffer, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

A Multi-generational Approach to Trends in Social Mobility

This project will analyze trends in social mobility across three successive generations using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. First, it will assess whether the two-generation paradigm of social mobility research provides an adequate description of empirical reality or whether it underestimates the intergenerational transmission of class membership. Second, it will analyze how the determinants of social mobility have changed across generations by assessing trends in the effects of separate indicators of socio-economic background independent of unobserved family characteristics. This project will thus provide a new kind of trend analysis, rooted in and extending two distinct methodological traditions of mobility research to fill a glaring gap in the assessment of U.S. social mobility trends.

Maria Rendon, University of California at Irvine

The Mobility Prospects of Latino Men: Before and After the Great Recession

This study will investigate how second-generation Latino men and their immigrant parents have experienced and responded to the Great Recession. The principal investigator will conduct a 5-year qualitative follow-up study of an educationally diverse sub-sample of 42 Latino young adult men from two high poverty neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Participants were first interviewed in 2007 and were 18-23 years of age before the start of the recession. During the follow-up study, in the summer of 2012, they will be 23-28 years old. The study has two specific aims. First, it will examine if and how second-generation Latino males have changed their assessment of America’s opportunity structure in reaction to the Great Recession. The second aim of this study is to examine the process of trying to move out of poverty and into the American middle class as experienced by second-generation Latino males raised in urban Los Angeles.