December 2005 RNR

December 21, 2005

IWPR’s Research News Reporter is distributed monthly to highlight informative, innovative, and sometimes controversial research related to women and their families. Each selection includes a short description of the research and either a link to the report itself or a citation. We sometimes include short pieces in their entirety.

In this edition:

1. Most Low-Income Parents Are Employed.
2. Maternity Leave and Employment of First-Time Mothers: 1961-2000.
3. Still Going Strong: Head Start Children, Families, Staff, and Programs in 2004.
4. The State of the World’s Children 2006: Excluded and Invisible

1. Most Low-Income Parents Are Employed.

National Center for Children in Poverty

November 2005

New analysis from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) challenges the notion that low-income parents are poor because they do not work enough. To the contrary, NCCP’s study reveals that the majority of children in low-income families, 55 percent, have at least one parent who works full-time, year-round. An additional 28 percent have at least one parent who works full-time or part-time for a portion of the year. Nearly one third of low-income parents work in the service sector. Of those working either part-time or part-year, a majority cite difficulty finding year-round, full-time employment. Of those not working, nearly half testified they could not work due to family care responsibilities. Of those remaining, 30 percent could not work as a result of an illness or disability.

The NCCP makes several policy recommendations on supporting low-income families, including increasing the minimum wage, providing more child care assistance, and protecting Social Security and SSI.

The full report is available at:

www.nccp.org/media/pel05?_text.pdf.

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2. Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns of First-Time Mothers: 1961-2000.

Julia Overturf Johnson and Barbara Downs

U.S. Census Bureau

October 2005

In this recently released Current Population Report, Johnson and Downs use the 2001 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), in combination with the 1984, 1985, and 1996 panels, to examine first-time mothers’ employment and maternity leave patterns between 1961 and 2000. Their analysis yields several interesting results:

• Women are increasingly more educated and older at their first birth. Today, the share of first births to women over 30 is 22 percent, up from 7 percent in 1960, while that to women under 25 dropped from 37 to 25 percent.
• The 1980s was a key decade with respect to women working late into pregnancy. In 1971-1975, 13 percent of women stopped working in their first trimester while only 27 percent worked into the last month. By 1981-1985, only 5 percent of women stopped working in the first three months, while the percent working into their last month nearly doubled, reaching 53 percent. Both figures have remained constant since 1981-1985.
• During the 1980s, it became more common for college-educated women to work into their 3rd trimester than for women with less than a high school education. In 1996-2000, 89 percent of college graduates, as opposed to 77 percent of high school dropouts, worked into their last trimester. One possible explanation for this shift is that college graduates are more likely to have jobs that offer the flexibility necessary for women to continue working late into their pregnancy.
• Since the 1970s, the use of paid leave by women has increasingly varied according to level of education. Between 1996-2000, women with a BA were much more likely to take paid leave (59 percent) than were women who did not complete high school (18 percent).

Full report is available at:

http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p70-103.pdf

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3. Still Going Strong: Head Start Children, Families, Staff, and Programs in 2004.

Katie Hamm and Danielle Ewen

Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)

November 2005

Still Going Strong is the sixth in the series of CLASP policy briefs that analyze Head Start Program data to identify key trends in the Head Start program since its reauthorization in 1998. Such information on the critical services that Head Start provides is important for discussions of reauthorization of the program. In this issue, data from the 2003-2004 program was used to describe the characteristics of Head Start and Early Head Start children, families, staff, and programs during that time period. Some of the findings include:

• Racially and ethnically diverse groups of children and pregnant women were served by the program. The participants were 31 percent Hispanic, 31 percent African American, 27 percent white, and 3 percent American Indian, Asian, Native Hawaiian each.
• Head Start provided crucial health services to children including medical screenings for 88 percent of children and dental screenings for 78 percent of children. About 13 percent of children exhibited behavior that required consultation with a mental health professional.
• In addition to these services, Head Start provided support services such as parenting resources, health education, emergency or crisis intervention, housing assistance, adult education, and transportation assistance to children and families.
• The year 2004 saw stronger ties between Head Start and parents, with parents comprising 65 percent of volunteers and 27 percent of staff.
• Head Start teachers earn substantially less than similarly qualified kindergarten teachers, about $24,211 in 2004 as opposed to $44,000.

Overall, Head Start continued to be a crucial support system for low-income children from diverse backgrounds with disadvantages.

The full report can be found at

http://www.clasp.org/publications/headstart_brief_6.pdf

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4. The State of the World’s Children 2006: Excluded and Invisible.

UNICEF

December 2005

This annual report from UNICEF is a comprehensive survey of global trends affecting children around the world. This particular report focuses on the situation of the world’s most vulnerable children, whose rights to a safe and healthy childhood are difficult to protect. UNICEF lays out four fundamental reasons that children in the developing world and their needs go unseen and unmet:

• They lack formal identity. More than 50 million children are not registered at birth in the developing countries each year.
• They lack parental care. Approximately 143 million children in the developing world have lost at least one of their parents.
• They are forced into adult roles. UNICEF estimates that more than 250,000 children are caught up in armed conflict as child soldiers, messengers, and sex slaves worldwide. More than 80 million girls in the developing world are married off before the age of 18.
• They are subjected to exploitation. Approximately 1.2 million children are trafficked every year into sex work, hazardous labor, and domestic service.

The report urges civil society, the private sector, donors, the media, international agencies, and governments around the world to make every effort to reach out to these children and create a protective environment for them. They recommend (a) carrying out research, monitoring, and reporting on the nature and extent of abuses against this group of children in the developing world (b) formulating policies and legislation to protect children (c) building child-focused budgets and strengthening institutions that serve children, and (d) creating reform programs in communities and countries to remove barriers that exclude children from essential services. The report also points out that meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will require that nations make a commitment to protecting their children.

The full report is available at

http://www.unicef.org/sowc06/fullreport/full_report.php

This edition of Research News Reporter was prepared by IWPR Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellows Jessica Koski and Inku Subedi.