Welfare Receipt and Family Structure: Evaluating the Effects on Children's Reading Achievement

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of public and private support systems on cognitive outcomes for children born to adolescent mothers. The data for this analysis were drawn from the 1979 to 1988 rounds of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The sample consists of 1382 children wlio were between the ages of six and ten in 1988. The key inputs for this analysis are four indicators of private support: average family income, extensiveness of mother's employment, presence of grandparents and presence of a significant other. Additionally, I use one indicator of public support: average number of survey years that the family received welfare benefits. All five indicators are averaged over the life span of the child. I also control for maternal resources — intellectual skills and self-esteem.

Overall, the findings indicate that private support systems are important in shaping children's cognitive achievement but these effects are contingent on the levels of maternal resources available. These results also suggest that total family income is a more important predictor of reading achievement than is a history of welfare receipt. Rather than focusing solely on the potential negative effects of welfare receipt on children, researchers and policy analysts should also be concerned with how maternal resources may interact with available private support systems to affect child development.