Parental Incarceration and Child Overweight

Amelia Branigan and Christopher Wildeman
Additional contact information
Amelia Branigan: University of Illinois at Chicago
Christopher Wildeman: Cornell University

Working Papers from Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing.

Abstract: While the past four decades have seen unprecedented increases in rates of both childhood obesity and parental incarceration, it remains unknown whether parental incarceration is associated with an increased risk of unhealthy weight among young children. We address this question using a sample of nine-year-olds from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, testing for effects separately by whether the mother, father, or both parents have a history of incarceration. Diverging from findings linking paternal incarceration to negative child behavioral outcomes, here we find no effect of incarcerated fathers on child body mass, while maternal incarceration is associated with significantly lower odds of overweight. Findings are consistent with an emerging body of research suggesting that the effects of maternal incarceration may differ from those of paternal incarceration, and caution against generalizing the direction of behavioral and mental health effects of parental incarceration to child physical health conditions.

JEL-codes: D63 I12 J13 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hea and nep-law
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/sites/fragilefamilies/files/wp17-22-ff.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pri:crcwel:wp17-22-ff

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bobray Bordelon (bordelon@princeton.edu).