Prenatal Household Income Instability and Infant Subcortical Brain Volumes.

Prenatal stress exposure may negatively influence the development of the amygdala and hippocampus. Although there is significant income instability during pregnancy, and it can increase stress among pregnant parents, the impact of income instability on brain development is not well understood. The present study examined the association between household income losses during pregnancy and hippocampus and amygdala volumes in early infancy.

The effect of New York State's Paid Family and Medical Leave Program on birth outcomes.

Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) programs provide material resources and time away from the labor force around the time of a child's birth. Past research indicates that the programs improve maternal and child health and may increase fertility. To date, 13 states and the District of Columbia have passed PFML laws, with varying lengths of leave, eligibility, job protections, and benefit levels.

New York State's Paid Family Leave Program and Children's Health Care Use.

Objective: Prior research has linked paid family leave programs with improvements in maternal and infant health. This study assessed changes in children's health care use following the implementation of New York State's Paid Family Leave Program (NYSPFL) and whether these changes vary by socioeconomic status or the presence of children with chronic health conditions in the home.

Methods: We used difference-in-differences (DD) and synthetic control method (SCM) approaches with data from the 2016-19 waves of the National Survey of Children's Health (n ∼24,000) to estimate the plausibly causal effects of NYSPFL on the health care use of children under age 18.

State-Level Spending on Children Associated with Unequal Benefits to School Readiness.

Objectives: To examine associations between state-level public investments in programming for children and parents' reports of their children's kindergarten readiness.

Methods: We use regression approaches with publicly available, nationally representative data to examine how time and state variation in public spending on children relates to parents' concerns about children's development. We link data on annual state-level spending on health and early learning from the Urban Institute's State-by-State Spending on Kids Dataset and the National Institute for Early Education Research to child-level data from the 2003/2004, 2007/2008, and 2011/2012 waves of the National Survey of Children's Health (NCHS), focusing on a subsample of parents with one or more children under age six (N = 56,736).