Comparing Mechanisms to Child Outcomes from Long-Term Economic Well-Being Measured with the Official Poverty Measure and the Supplemental Poverty Measure

Gary W. Reinbold ()
Additional contact information
Gary W. Reinbold: University of Illinois at Springfield

Child Indicators Research, 2018, vol. 11, issue 3, No 15, 1007-1028

Abstract: Abstract We used Panel Study of Income Dynamics data to compare paths to nine child outcomes from long-term economic well-being calculated using either the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) or the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). Our sample included 953 10- to 18-year-old U.S. children. We used structural equation models to assess two broad mechanisms: the child’s home environment and parental mental health concerns. The portion of the relationship between our child outcomes and long-term economic well-being that was mediated by parental mental health concerns was generally similar with the OPM and SPM measures; on average, that mechanism explained about 8% of that relationship with the OPM measure and about 5% of that relationship with the SPM measure. However, the portion of that relationship that was mediated by the home environment was always much larger with the OPM measure than with the SPM measure; on average, that mechanism explained about 20% of that relationship with the OPM measure, but only about 5% of that relationship with the SPM measure. These results suggest that programs designed to enhance child outcomes by addressing parents’ mental health needs could use either OPM- or SPM-based measures to select families, but that OPM-based measures may be more effective to select families for programs designed to enhance child outcomes by improving the child’s home environment.

Keywords: Child well-being; Poverty; Official poverty measure; Supplemental poverty measure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-017-9477-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:chinre:v:11:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s12187-017-9477-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... f-life/journal/12187

DOI: 10.1007/s12187-017-9477-4

Access Statistics for this article

Child Indicators Research is currently edited by Asher Ben-Arieh

More articles in Child Indicators Research from Springer, The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().