While individuals returning from prison face many barriers to successful re-entry, among the most serious are the challenges they face in securing housing. Housing has long been recognized as a prerequisite for stable employment, access to social services, and other aspects of individual and...

High rates of incarceration, coupled with high rates of fatherhood among men in prison, has motivated a far-reaching literature that examines the effects of paternal incarceration on family stability and child development. Although a growing body of evidence documents significant disadvantage...

Although developing-country research has found that spending on children's food, healthcare, and education varies depending on which parent controls income, developed-country research on child wellbeing tends to ignore intrahousehold allocation. This study uses data from the Fragile Families and...

This study uses data from 2,309 biological fathers who participated in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to examine associations between psychosocial characteristics and levels of corporal punishment (CP) toward their 3-year old children over the past month. Results indicate...

At the nexus of changing marital and fertility behavior is a new reality of contemporary family life—the fact that a significant fraction of adults today (will) have biological children by more than one partner, sometimes called ‘multi-partnered fertility.’ In this paper, we use data from...

When parents engage in childbearing with more than one partner or multi-partnered fertility, this gives rise to a complex family system with strong implications for transfers to children. This study therefore seeks to measure the effect of multi-partnered fertility on formal and informal child...

We use data from three waves of the Fragile Families Study (N = 2,111) to examine the prevalence and effects of mothers’ partnership changes between birth and age 3 on children’s behavior. We find that children born to unmarried and minority parents experience significantly more partnership...

Low-income families rely on various sources of support, both public and private, to make ends meet. Although doubling up (moving in with relatives or nonkin) is a common source of support, previous research has not examined the economic value of doubling up as part of a family’s income...

Low income men are at particular risk for experiencing adverse health conditions such as depression which may reduce involvement with their children. Low income men may also face significant challenges in becoming and remaining involved with their children over time, as many fathers may cease to...

In this analysis we connect neighborhood conditions to birth outcomes through their intermediate effects on allostatic load. We hypothesize that neighborhood poverty and racial isolation combine to produce unsafe environments which raise allostatic load and thereby increase the likelihood of...