Caution! Men Not at Work: Gender-Specific Labor Market Conditions and Child Maltreatment
This paper examines the effect of labor market conditions—measured through unemployment, mass layoffs and predicted employment—on child abuse and neglect using county-level data from California. Using these indicators we separately estimate the effects of overall and gender-specific economic shocks. We find only modest evidence of a link between overall economic conditions and child maltreatment. However, analysis by gender reveals robust evidence that maltreatment decreases with indicators for male employment and increases with indicators for female employment. These opposite-signed effects are consistent with a theoretical framework that builds on family-time-use models and is supported by analysis of time-use data.
Published Versions
Jason M. Lindo & Jessamyn Schaller & Benjamin Hansen, 2018. "Caution! Men not at work: Gender-specific labor market conditions and child maltreatment," Journal of Public Economics, . citation courtesy of 
More from NBER
In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability, the Bulletin on Health, and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship — as well as online conference reports, video lectures, and interviews.
