Maternal Job Displacement and Child School Success

Robert G. White, University of Florida

This paper examines the effects of involuntary job displacement on children’s achievement in school. I verify the negative effects of jobloss on children’s achievement and show that these effects depend on whether the job displacement was due to a layoff or a firing. I allow for differential jobloss effects by child age to account for children’s changing susceptibility to household disruptions during their development. I then consider the duration of jobloss effects over time by explicitly accounting for the duration of time since jobloss. This approach takes explicit account of the age sensitivity of children at different periods of development as well as the time elapsed since experiencing a jobloss. I account for coresiding partners’ labor force attachment and further consider the differential effects of jobloss by a measure of family economic insecurity at the time of jobloss.