The Effect of Fatherhood on Employment Hours: Variation by Birth Timing, Marriage and Coresidence.

Drawing on the life course paradigm, I assess how the effect of fatherhood on employment hours varies by age of becoming a parent and time elapsed since the birth. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - 1979 Cohort from 1979 to 2002 (N = 28,514 observations), separate effects are estimated based on fathers' marital status and co-residence with own children. Only unmarried men who became fathers before 24 work longer hours immediately after a first birth, but in the long run, most early fathers work fewer hours as a result of parenthood. Over time, unmarried but coresident men who became fathers between 24 and 29 increase their hours, as do married, coresident men who delayed fatherhood until 30 or older. However, the latter increase is moderated by support for egalitarian gender roles. The findings shed light on the contemporary transition to adulthood and on men's work-family balance.

The international child poverty gap: does demography matter?

According to the Luxembourg Income Study data, the U.S. child poverty rate is the second highest among 15 high-income nations. The present work reveals that 55% of all American children living in a household headed by a single female with no other adult present live in poverty-the highest rate for any of the five living arrangements in the 15 countries examined in this study. While previous analyses have focused on market forces and governmental redistribution across households, we question the contribution of demographic factors that place children in family structures with different poverty risks relative to other factors such as differential market opportunities and governmental benefits for adults caring for children in various living arrangements. Applying a classic demographic decomposition technique to the overall poverty gap, we find that the distributional effect of demographic behavior contributes little to the U.S. poverty gap with other nations (and none with respect to the United Kingdom). Overall differences in labor markets and welfare schemes best explain the U.S. child poverty gap, although for some countries, the gap is accentuated by the gradient of governmental transfers, and for most countries, by the gradient of market earnings across living arrangements.