> RNR Home

> RNR Archives

> RNR Help

> IWPR Home

February 14, 2005

IWPR’s Research News Reporter is distributed monthly to highlight inventive, informative, innovative, and sometimes controversial research relating 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. Don’t Bowl at Night: Gender, Safety, and Civic Participation
2. Family Child Care: Recent Trends and New Directions
3. Women's Educational Gains and the Gender Earnings Gap
4. The Effects on Employment and Wages When Medicaid and Child Care Subsidies are No Longer Available

1. Don’t Bowl at Night: Gender, Safety, and Civic Participation

Amy Caiazza, Ph.D.

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

January 2005

This article explores the questions: “Do perceived levels of safety from crime or violence influence men’s and women’s decisions to become involved in their communities? Since many of these activities are scheduled after work, in the evenings, when it is dark out, does fear of crime keep people from participating in them? And do men and women approach these issues differently? That is, does perceived vulnerability to crime influence a woman’s choice to become involved in different ways than it influences a man’s?”

The author documents the relationships between men’s and women’s levels of perceived safety from crime and violence in their neighborhoods and communities, on the one hand, and their involvement in community organizations and activities, on the other hand. She analyzes the ways that perceived safety interacts with other predictors of civic engagement, including income, residence, education, and parental and marital status, to influence overall levels of involvement. The article found that, overall, levels of perceived safety have a more significant relationship to women’s civic engagement than they do with men’s. For women as a group, a sense of perceived safety is strongly related to involvement in the community, while a lack of perceived safety is linked to disengagement. In contrast, among men as a group, safety plays a relatively insignificant role in encouraging or discouraging engagement.

This article also analyzes how differences in socioeconomic status are related to these patterns.

Please contact Justine Augeri at IWPR (augeri@iwpr.org) for a reprint.

2. Family Child Care: Recent Trends and New Directions

Katie Hamm and Avis Jones-DeWeeever, Ph.D.

Institute for Women’s Policy Research

October 2004

 This Research-In-Brief provides a review of literature on recent trends in family child care. The Over the past few decades, the demand for child care has grown as more parents entered the paid workforce and policy changes mandated work requirements for welfare participants. An estimated 26 percent of the 11.2 million children who spend time in non-parental care are cared for in family child care homes. A family child care provider, distinct from a relative caregiver, is defined as a paid provider that cares for two or more unrelated children I n her/his home. Infants and toddlers are more likely than older children to be served in a family child care set-up, and low-income children are more likely than higher-income children to be in family child care. Despite widespread use of family child care providers, the quality of this type of care is often inadequate, especially in settings that serve low-income children.

Many family child care providers are isolated from community resources and lack access to education and training. Low wages and few benefits provide little incentive for trained and licensed providers to enter the family child care field. Recently, states and localities have enhanced efforts to improve the quality of care provided in family child care settings through financial incentives, social support, and training opportunities. In a forthcoming report, IWPR will examine promising programs and policies designed to improve the quality of family child care.

 http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/G716.pdf

 3. Women's Educational Gains and the Gender Earnings Gap

American Association of University Women

January 2005

This online guide and set of reports, prepared in partnership with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, document women’s educational status and earnings state by state, and by race and ethnicity. The reports show that even college-educated women who work full time earn substantially less than comparable men. The authors present a map of the earnings ratio between college-educated women and men who work full-time, year-round (based on data from the 2000 Census), detailed reports on California, Texas, Michigan, and Georgia, answers to frequently asked questions on college education and women, and data on educational attainment and earnings by race and ethnicity. The authors find that a typical college-educated woman working full time earns $44,200 a year compared to $61,800 for college-educated male workers—a difference of $17,600.

 http://www.aauw.org/research/statedata/index.cfm

4. The Effects on Employment and Wages When Medicaid and Child Care Subsidies are No Longer Available

Heather Boushey, Ph.D.

Center for Economic and Policy Research

January 26, 2005

The study shows that work supports such as adequate health insurance coverage and child care are critical to helping low-wage mothers stay employed. During the state fiscal crisis of the early 2000s, many publicly funded work support programs were either reduced or eliminated, with those working often the first cut from the programs. In addition, many work support programs are time-limited or phase-out as income rises, limiting low-income mothers’ ability to stay employed.

This study uses the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine how patterns of Medicaid and child care access affect women’s employment outcomes. The study finds that less than a quarter of women who stopped receiving Medicaid in 2002-2003 went on to receive health coverage from employers. In addition, those who left Medicaid in 2002-2003 were less likely to receive employer-provided health insurance than those who left in 1997-1998. The study finds that women who lost Medicaid without receiving employer-provided health insurance were nine times as likely to leave the labor market, compared to women who moved into employer-provided health insurance.

The author points out that, in order to receive health and child care work supports, many women need to either be on welfare or have just exited welfare. Many working families cannot afford to purchase health insurance and child care, and only those who very recently left welfare have any likelihood of receiving public benefits. This creates a hole in the safety net for low-wage working women that do not recieve welfare, who are not likely to have access to employer-provided health insurance or to have sufficient income to purchase health insurance and child care in the market.

http://www.cepr.net/publications/Effects_on_employment_wages_without_medicaid_child_care_subsidies.htm

This edition of IWPR’s Research News Reporter was prepared by Elizabeth Circo.