Using a nationwide sample of early childcare centers, Jamie Chriqui, Julien Leider, and Rebecca M. Schermbeck assess centers’ awareness of and reported readiness for implementing updated standards from the Child and Adult Care Food Program.
Jamie Chriqui, Rebecca M. Schermbeck, and Julien Leider assess menu development, meal/snack preparation, provider meal preparation-related training, and food purchasing at early childcare centers.
Late elementary school and middle school has long been seen as a critical point in child development, and several studies have shown that students experience a decline in performance when they transition from elementary to middle or middle to high school, and that they do not recover from these dips. Local school boards may choose to operate schools as K-8 combined elementary and middle schools or as K-5 elementary schools with separate middle schools, but little is known about how this structuring of grades might influence health outcomes or behavior.
Leveraging more than a decade’s worth of data, the researchers will examine relationships between at-risk children’s health and education outcomes, as well as access to public services. This is vital information as states across the country, and Tennessee in particular, adopt new laws and resolutions that encompass a wide range of policy actions related to child health and education.
Researchers at Brown University released a working paper analyzing the effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on nutritional quality of purchased foods. Examining seven years of transaction records at a large U.S. grocery chain, the team found that SNAP participation had only a small effect on the nutritional quality of purchased foods.
Transfers and work supports such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) increase family resources, and may enable households to make critical investments in their members’ health and human capital. Yet not all eligible households claim this tax credit, losing out on income support that can have potentially large effects on health, education, and other dimensions of well-being of family members.
Research has shown the crucial importance of household income in shaping child health, but we have limited understanding of the actual health impacts of high profile income-related policies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Furthermore, state-level initiatives in this domain are particularly active and promising for future innovation. In this study, the research team will first investigate the multi-dimensional child health effects of state EITC expansions.
Since 2004, California’s state disability insurance program has provided six weeks of parental leave at 55 percent pay (in addition to typically 6-8 weeks of postpartum disability leave for biological mothers, also at 55 percent pay). However, many parents—especially those of lower-income—cannot afford to take this bonding leave at only partial pay. San Francisco’s new Paid Parental Leave Ordinance (PPLO) addresses this issue by requiring San Francisco employers to supplement up to 100% pay for six weeks of parental bonding leave.
Many hourly workers, especially in the retail sector, contend with unstable and unpredictable work schedules in which the number of hours, the days of the week, and the times of day that they work vary substantially from week to week. This chronic instability is likely to negatively affect workers and could also have spillover effects for children.
A Critical Juncture for Health: Heidi Hartmann and Will Dow Discuss New P4A Research Hub on Work-Family-Supports
Heidi Hartmann and Will Dow are the codirectors of P4A’s new Research Hub at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the University of California, Berkeley. We sat down with them to learn more about their research portfolio and why it matters for policymakers, advocates, and community leaders.