Parental Job Loss and Children’s Academic Progress

Ariel Kalil, University of Chicago
Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, University of Chicago

We use data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine children’s grade repetition and suspension/expulsion as a function of maternal and paternal job experiences in married-couple families. We identify parents who were underemployed, had one job loss, had multiple job losses, or were persistently unemployed over a two-year period. Distinguishing involuntary from voluntary job losses, we examine whether parental job experiences relate to children’s academic progress through income instability and source or parental stress and emotional care. Mothers’ employment is never significantly associated with children’s academic progress. In contrast, we found significant adverse associations between fathers’ involuntary job losses on children’s probability of grade repetition and fathers’ multiple job losses on children’s probability of school suspension/expulsion. The associations between fathers’ job losses and grade repetition are especially true for lower-income and younger children, whereas associations between fathers’ job losses and suspension/expulsion are apparent for higher-income children.