Relationship Between Sex-Specific Labor Market Performance and Breastfeeding Prevalence.

BACKGROUND: Prior research has explored the association between women's employment status and breastfeeding at the individual level, however; a notable gap in scholarly inquiry exists regarding the relationship between labor market performance and breastfeeding at the population level. RESEARCH AIM: The aim of this paper is to investigate the association between labor market performance and breastfeeding prevalence in the United States. METHODS: This study is a cross-sectional analysis of the association between labor market performance and the prevalence of breastfeeding. Our analysis is conducted at the state level using data published up to late 2021 from the Current Population Survey and the National Immunization Survey. The first dataset was used to construct aggregate and sex-specific state level indicators of labor market performance for both males and females. The second dataset supplied the proportion of mothers breastfeeding for the corresponding birth cohort from each state. RESULTS: Higher average weekly hours worked by females in the year before giving birth was associated with a lower prevalence of breastfeeding, but employment rates among females did not significantly affect breastfeeding prevalence. Among males, current employment rates were positively associated with breastfeeding prevalence; however, no significant relationship was observed between breastfeeding prevalence and average weekly work hours worked. CONCLUSION: Sex-specific labor market performance may play a role in breastfeeding decisions and the timing of labor market performance relative to childbirth is important. Furthermore, these results highlight that employment rates and hours worked might be associated with child health through breastfeeding prevalence.

Building blocks for a happy life: Longitudinal associations between early life income, mentorship and later well-being.

Longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID; N = 2996) were used to test hypotheses about the link between well-being and financial and social developmental resources. Results suggest that higher average family income from birth to age 18, and personal and professional mentoring received between 17 and 30, were positively associated with indicators of positive well-being and negatively related to negative indicators of well-being. Interactions between early life family income and mentoring during emerging adulthood were not significant predictors of any of the well-being outcomes. In all cases, the magnitudes of the coefficients became larger when simultaneously accounting for early life income, emerging adulthood mentoring, and their interactions-suggesting that financial and social resources in earlier life are independently linked to later life well-being. Findings highlight that mentoring received in emerging adulthood benefits downstream hedonic and eudemonic well-being, regardless of financial resources.

Long-term health effects of childhood parental income.

While research on the link between socio-economic status and health spans several decades, our understanding of this relationship is still severely constrained. We estimate the long-term effects of parental income from birth to age 18 on health and risky health behaviors in adulthood. We use over 4 decades of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, from 1968 to 2017, to construct a unique data set that links 49,459 person-year outcomes in adulthood, to several parental and family level variables when they were born and throughout their childhood. To mitigate concerns that parental income is likely correlated with unobserved factors that determine children's outcomes in adulthood, we estimate an instrumental variables model. We construct a simulated income variable that is used to instrument for parental income. This approach breaks the link between an individual's own parental income and unobserved characteristics that are possibly correlated with their health in the long run. We find that a $10,000 increase in annual parental income increases the likelihood of very good or excellent health in adulthood by 3.7%, reduces the likelihood of physical limitation by 10.3%, and reduces the likelihood of smoking and the number of cigarettes smoked per day by 12.7% and 16.7%, respectively. We also find that the pathways by which income improves health are increased education, employment, annual hours worked, pre-tax hourly earnings and pre-tax annual earnings. Our results highlight the lasting impact of economic resources in childhood and the importance of growing up in a financially stable environment.