TY  - JOUR
AU  - Stevens,Ann Huff
AU  - Schaller,Jessamyn
TI  - Short-run Effects of Parental Job Loss on Children's Academic Achievement
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15480
PY  - 2009
Y2  - November 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15480
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15480.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ann Huff Stevens
Department of Economics
One Shields Avenue
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA  95616
Tel: 530/752-3034
E-Mail: annstevens@ucdavis.edu

Jessamyn Schaller
UC, Davis
E-Mail: jschaller@ucdavis.edu
AB  - We study the relationship between parental job loss and children’s academic achievement using data on job loss and grade retention from the 1996, 2001, and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. We find that a parental job loss increases the probability of children’s grade retention by 0.8 percentage points, or around 15 percent. After conditioning on child fixed effects, there is no evidence of significantly increased grade retention prior to the job loss, suggesting a causal link between the parental employment shock and children’s academic difficulties. These effects are concentrated among children whose parents have a high school education or less.
ER  -