Workshop on Human Potential (Heather Hill, SSA)

Abstract: Income variability and trend are potentially important and understudied dimensions of the established empirical relationship between family income and children’s healthy development. Even prominent studies of the timing of poverty during childhood do not model income variability explicitly. This gap prevents social science from speaking to the salience of increasing economic instability for children and to the wisdom of social policies designed to stabilize income.  Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) core survey from 1971-2009, this study examines income dynamics across four decades and during four specific stages of childhood. Income dynamics are captured with measures of income level (average income and experience of poverty), trend (yearly growth rate in income-to-needs), and variability (average percent deviation from average income, total number of large income changes, and the coefficient of variation).  Descriptive graphs and tables describe income dynamics across four child age sub-groups—0-4 years; 5-9 years; 10-14 years; and 15-19 years—which correspond roughly to early childhood, middle childhood, early adolescence, and late adolescence. The study also examines differences in patterns by the household income level, and the education level and race of the household head.  Finally, OLS regression models are used to predict the measures of income volatility as a function of family events and a set of time invariant covariates.  The results suggest a general improvement over time in the average level of income for families of children (at all ages), experienced almost exclusively by families at the top end of the income distribution.  Income variability has also increased over time and this change has been particularly dramatic for the families with children at the bottom of the income distribution.  The analyses suggest substantial consistency in economic circumstances across childhood, but some evidence of an increase in income variability during later adolescence.

Bio: Heather D. Hill is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration (SSA). She holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University. Hill’s research examines how social policies influence family economic circumstances and child well-being in low-income families, and how family economic instability affects child health, behavior, and academic success.  She has received grants for her work from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment and the Population Research Center at NORC and the University of Chicago. Hill is the co-PI (with Susan Lambert) of EINet: The Employment Instability, Family Well-being, and Social Policy Network, which promotes interdisciplinary research on the causes and consequences of employment instability.