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  1. Abstract Objective

    This mixed‐methods study examined whether higher‐socioeconomic status (SES) children's digital technology use adhered to contemporaneous pediatric guidelines, how it compared to lower‐SES children, and why, as analyses showed, higher‐SES children's technology use far exceeded pediatric recommendations.

    Background

    2013 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines recommended limited “screen time” for children. Higher SES families tend to follow guidelines, but digital technology use—simultaneously a health behavior and a pathway for building human capital—has complex implications.

    Method

    Quantitative analyses provide new nationally representative estimates of the relationship between social class and 9‐ to 13‐year‐old children's technology time (including television), device access, and parenting rules (2014 PSID Child Development Supplement,N = 427). Qualitative analyses of 77 longitudinal higher‐SES parent interviews articulated explanatory processes.

    Results

    Higher‐SES children used technology as frequently as others and in excess of recommendations. Their device access, activities, and agency in adhering to rules, however, differed from others. Qualitative analysis uncovered processes that helped explain these findings: parents' ambivalence about technology and perception that expert guidance is absent or unrealistic, and children's exercise of agency to use technology facilitated by “concerted cultivation” parenting styles, led to higher‐SES individualistic parenting practices that supported children's increased non‐television technology use.

    Conclusion

    Cultures and structures related to children's technology use are in flux, and classed norms and understandings are emerging to construct relevant class‐based distinctions around parenting.

     
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  2. Abstract

    Adaptive survey designs are increasingly used by survey practitioners to counteract ongoing declines in household survey response rates and manage rising fieldwork costs. This paper reports findings from an evaluation of an early-bird incentive (EBI) experiment targeting high-effort respondents who participate in the 2019 wave of the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We identified a subgroup of high-effort respondents at risk of nonresponse based on their prior wave fieldwork effort and randomized them to a treatment offering an extra time-delimited monetary incentive for completing their interview within the first month of data collection (treatment group; N = 800) or the standard study incentive (control group; N = 400). In recent waves, we have found that the costs of the protracted fieldwork needed to complete interviews with high-effort cases in the form of interviewer contact attempts plus an increased incentive near the close of data collection are extremely high. By incentivizing early participation and reducing the number of interviewer contact attempts and fieldwork days to complete the interview, our goal was to manage both nonresponse and survey costs. We found that the EBI treatment increased response rates and reduced fieldwork effort and costs compared to a control group. We review several key findings and limitations, discuss their implications, and identify the next steps for future research.

     
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  3. This survey study uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to compare trends from 2015 to 2019 in food insecurity among households with children with trends from 1999 to 2003. 
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  4. Objectives. To examine the effects of childhood participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on adult food security in the United States. Methods. We used data from the 1984 to 2019 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to follow a balanced panel of 1406 individuals from birth through ages 20 to 36 years. We measured food insecurity from 1999 to 2003 and 2015 to 2019 among those who resided in low-income households during childhood. Results. Twenty-eight percent of individuals who resided in low-income households during childhood exhibited improved food security status from childhood to adulthood. Those who participated in SNAP and WIC during childhood had 4.16-fold higher odds (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.91, 9.03) of being more food secure than those who were eligible for but did not receive SNAP or WIC, and those who participated in SNAP alone had 3.28-fold higher odds (95% CI = 1.56, 6.88). Conclusions. Participation in social safety net programs such as SNAP and WIC during childhood helps to improve food security across the life course. Our findings add evidence regarding the long-term benefits of participation in SNAP and WIC during childhood. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(10):1498–1506. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.306967 ) 
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  5. Conventional advice discourages controlling for postoutcome variables in regression analysis. By contrast, we show that controlling for commonly available postoutcome (i.e., future) values of the treatment variable can help detect, reduce, and even remove omitted variable bias (unobserved confounding). The premise is that the same unobserved confounder that affects treatment also affects the future value of the treatment. Future treatments thus proxy for the unmeasured confounder, and researchers can exploit these proxy measures productively. We establish several new results: Regarding a commonly assumed data-generating process involving future treatments, we (1) introduce a simple new approach and show that it strictly reduces bias, (2) elaborate on existing approaches and show that they can increase bias, (3) assess the relative merits of alternative approaches, and (4) analyze true state dependence and selection as key challenges. (5) Importantly, we also introduce a new nonparametric test that uses future treatments to detect hidden bias even when future-treatment estimation fails to reduce bias. We illustrate these results empirically with an analysis of the effect of parental income on children’s educational attainment. 
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  6. This study examines the relationship between health and adolescent employment. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics’ Child Development Supplement and Transition into Adulthood Supplement, we examine a cohort of 2,925 youth who were followed from childhood into adolescence. We focus on two outcomes measured when sample members were ages 16, 17, and 18: employment status and average weekly hours worked. With these data, we test the hypothesis that youth with health conditions will be less likely to work and if they do work, they work fewer hours a week. We find mixed support for this hypothesis. Youth with sensory limitations, developmental disabilities, and externalizing problem behaviors are less likely to work than their peers without these conditions. However, conditional on being employed, youth with externalizing problem behaviors and ADHD work more hours a week than their peers without those conditions. 
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  7. Abstract We document changes in U.S. children's family household composition from 1968 to 2017 with regard to the number and types of kin that children lived with and the frequency of family members' household entrances and departures. Data are from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 30,412). Children experienced three decades of increasing instability and diversification in household membership, arriving at a state of “stable complexity” in the most recent decade. Stable complexity is distinguished by a decline in the number of coresident parents; a higher number of stepparents, grandparents, and other relatives in children's households; and less turnover in household membership compared with prior decades, including fewer sibling departures. College-educated households with children were consistently the most stable and least diverse. On several dimensions, household composition has become increasingly similar for non-Hispanic Black and White children. Children in Hispanic households are distinct in having larger family sizes and more expected household entrances and departures by coresident kin. 
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  8. We conducted an experiment to evaluate the effects on fieldwork outcomes and interview mode of switching to a web-first mixed-mode data collection design (self-administered web interview and interviewer-administered telephone interview) from a telephone-only design. We examine whether the mixed-mode option leads to better survey outcomes, based on response rates, fieldwork outcomes, interview quality and costs. We also examine respondent characteristics associated with completing a web interview rather than a telephone interview. Our mode experiment study was conducted in the 2019 wave of the Transition into Adulthood Supplement (TAS) to the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). TAS collects information biennially from approximately 3,000 young adults in PSID families. The shift to a mixed-mode design for TAS was aimed at reducing costs and increasing respondent cooperation. We found that for mixed-mode cases compared to telephone only cases, response rates were higher, interviews were completed faster and with lower effort, the quality of the interview data appeared better, and fieldwork costs were lower. A clear set of respondent characteristics reflecting demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, technology availability and use, time use, and psychological health were associated with completing a web interview rather than a telephone interview. 
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