Assessing the New Federalism Occasional Paper No. 71
The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).
About the Series
Assessing the New Federalism is a multiyear Urban Institute project designed to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on health care, income security, employment and training programs, and
social services. Researchers monitor program changes and fiscal developments. In collaboration with Child Trends, the project studies changes in family well-being. The project aims to provide timely, nonpartisan information to inform public debate and to help state and local decisionmakers carry out their new responsibilities more effectively.
Key components of the project include a household survey, studies of policies in 13 states, and a database with information on all states and the District of Columbia, available at the Urban Institute's web site. This paper is one in a series of occasional papers analyzing information from these and other sources.
The way children spend their time when they are not in school is an important issue for families, communities, and policymakers. In recent years, policymakers and parents have agreed that children's out-of-school time deserves attention at both a local and national level (Larner, Zippiroli, and Behrman 1999). New policies aimed at improving the affordability of school-age child care and state and local initiatives offering academic and enrichment activities for children after regular school hours are public acknowledgments of the importance of providing more supervised after-school options for children and their families. Nevertheless, for a variety of reasons, a substantial number of families with school-age children regularly leave them with a sibling or alone to care for themselves.
Often called "latchkey" care, self-care may place children at risk. Children in self-care may experience more accidents and injuries (Kerrebrock and Lewit 1999; Peterson 1989); externalizing behavior problems (Colwell et al. 2001; Vandell and Posner 1999); and lower social competence, GPAs, and achievement test scores (Pettit et al. 1997). Likewise, self-care in adolescence has been linked to an increased likelihood of cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and drug use (Mott et al. 1999; Mulhall, Stone, and Stone 1996). Thus, while self-care may reflect a step toward independence and autonomy for some children, it is often portrayed as a
potentially dangerous arrangement for children that parents use as a last resort when they have no options for nonparental supervised care.
Yet self-care occurs under diverse circumstances, for a variety of reasons, and with different implications for different children (Kerrebrock and Lewit 1999; Vandell and Shumow 1999). For example, self-care is more prevalent among older children (Hofferth et al. 1991; Smith 2000). In addition, the use of self-care is less likely when parents have concerns about their child's maturity or about the safety of their neighborhood (Vandell and Shumow 1999). When outcomes such as social competence, behavior problems, and school performance are examined in relation to self-care, negative associations are more likely to be found for younger children and for children from low-income families, implying that these groups of children are at greater risk than other children (Marshall et al. 1997; Pettit et al. 1997; Vandell and Posner 1999). Clearly, the context in which self-care occurs makes a difference.
Despite the accumulation of evidence about self-care, a number of unanswered questions remain. In particular, while we know that factors such as children's maturity and family resources play a role in the use of self-care, we do not know which of these are most strongly related to self-care when a range of relevant family and child characteristics is examined simultaneously. What matters most? Do the patterns of relevant factors differ for different groups of children?
This paper addresses these questions using data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), a nationally representative household survey. Building on previous analyses conducted using other national surveys (Cain and Hofferth 1989; Casper and Smith 2002; Hofferth, Jankuniene, and Brandon 2000; Smith and Casper 1999), we seek to replicate and extend patterns that have emerged fairly consistently across datasets; explore patterns of findings that have been inconsistent, considering whether the patterns hold for specific populations of children but not others; and extend this body of work by examining correlates of self-care not examined previously.
We first describe our data and methods. Next, we provide a snapshot of the prevalence and extent of self-care in the United States. We then propose a set of family and child characteristics that are likely to be associated with self-care and, using NSAF data, report how the prevalence of self-care varies for children with different characteristics.
Next, we use multivariate analyses to estimate the size and statistical strength of the relationship between each factor and self-care, controlling for the other relevant factors. These analyses are meant to disentangle important associations between individual factors and the likelihood of self-care, not to identify causal links (acknowledging especially the limitations of data from a single point in time for considering such links). We also explore whether the patterns of associations found for all children differ for important subgroups. For example, because older children are much more likely than younger children to be placed in self-care, we examine whether the patterns of correlates differ for younger and older children. In addition, we investigate whether the patterns differ for children living in families with different income
levels. Finally, we conduct exploratory analyses to examine the pattern of family and child characteristics associated with spending longer amounts of time in self-care. We conclude with a summary of key findings and the implications for families, programs, and policymakers.
This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).
Acknowledgments
This report is part of the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project, a multiyear effort to monitor and assess the devolution of social programs from the federal to the state and local levels. Alan Weil is the project director. The project analyzes changes in income support, social services, and health programs. In collaboration with Child Trends, the project studies child and family well-being.
Research for this paper was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Assessing the New Federalism project is currently supported by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The Ford Foundation.
The authors would like to thank Kristin Smith, Alan Weil, and Rashmita Mistry for helpful comments on this paper. We are also indebted to Beth Miller, who provided useful comments on a shorter version of this paper. Preliminary versions of the analyses for this paper were presented at the 2001 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management in Dallas, Texas.
Latest Research
Browse by Topic:
PDF
Printer-friendly summary
