SPHR Alumni Dr Mario Martínez-Jiménez has recently published one of his PhD chapters in Economics and Human Biology. Here, Mario tells us about his research findings.
By Dr Mario Martínez-Jiménez
The impact of parental joblessness on children’s long-term health is not often studied, but it is a crucial topic for policymakers to understand as many children are likely to experience parental non-employment during childhood. My research explored how children are affected at different ages, and how factors like gender and education play a role in the outcomes.
The latest ONS labour market overview for the UK shows that approximately 14% of households have no adult members in employment and around 27% of households have at least one workless adult. In this paper, I study the relationship of experiencing parental joblessness during different stages of childhood and children’s health later in life. Using secondary data from the British Household Panel Study and the UK Household Longitudinal studies, I also study the effects of differences such as family status, the parents’ gender and the number of parental nonemployment spells, as well as the potential mechanisms driving this relationship.
This new study finds that children are more likely to suffer mental and physical ill-health in later life if they have jobless parents during their childhood. The findings indicate that having a jobless father, rather than a jobless mother, during the middle stage (6–10 years) increases the likelihood that children will suffer from mental ill-health in later life. This may be rooted in social dynamics as typically, fathers are still the primary earners in a family, so the financial impact is often therefore greater.
When both parents are without work, the consequences for children are even more severe. If the joblessness occurs in the early stage of childhood (0–5 years), there is an increased likelihood of children developing long-standing illnesses in early adulthood (between the ages of 18 and 33).
This research also finds that not all children and families are affected equally or at the same stage. For example, the gender of the child is a key determinant of how parental joblessness affects children. It is possible that boys, particularly when younger, exhibit less inhibition and regulatory skills than girls, which could account for these findings. In addition, children whose parents are less educated tend to experience the negative impacts of parental worklessness more significantly.
As potential mechanisms driving these results, this study finds that young adults are more likely to live below the poverty threshold if they experience parental joblessness at any time of their childhood. If the joblessness happens in the early stage (0–5), they are less likely to go on to achieve a university degree, whereas if it happens in the middle stage (6–10), they are more likely to still be living with their parents as adults.
The findings of this research have significant policy implications. Interventions aimed at specifically supporting children living in workless households may offer a significant return on investment in terms of healthcare savings made through mitigating the impact of later mental and physical illness. Targeted support for disadvantaged households may help to stop parental worklessness from increasing factors that can make children more likely to be jobless and, in turn, contribute to breaking the cycle of generational poverty.
As a Research Associate in Economics at Imperial College Business School and the Centre of Health Economics and Policy Innovations, my primary objective is to tackle health disparities among diverse groups of people through empirical methods. Currently, I am investigating the efficacy of fiscal policies in motivating individuals to opt for healthier food alternatives. Furthermore, I am also interested to researching in the areas of child development, fertility behaviour, and human capital formation.