We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 15591
September 2022
The Kids Aren't Alright: Parental Job Loss and Children's Outcomes within and beyond Schools
Diogo Britto, Caíque Melo, Breno Sampaio

We study the effects of parental job loss on children and how access to unemployment benefits can mitigate these impacts. We leverage unique nationwide data from Brazil linking multiple administrative datasets, and take a comprehensive approach studying impacts on education as well as other key dimensions of children's lives. First, leveraging mass layoffs for identification, we show that parental job loss increases school dropouts and age-grade distortion by up to 1.5 percentage points. These effects are pervasive, last for at least six years and significantly reduce high-school completion rates. Second, we document that other important dimensions of children's lives are affected. Following the layoff, children are more likely to work informally, commit crime, and experience early pregnancy. In turn, parents reduce educational investments by moving children from private to lower-quality public schools. Using a clean regression discontinuity design, we show that access to unemployment benefits effectively mitigates some of the intergenerational impacts of job loss, notably on teenage school dropouts and crime, and on parental investments in school quality. Our findings indicate that the income losses following parental displacement are an important mechanism of the effects on children, highlighting the importance of policies that provide income support for displaced workers.

Kommunikation
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Netzwerkkoordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

Das IZA@LISER-Netzwerk ist eine weltweite Gemeinschaft für exzellente Forschung in der Arbeitsmarktökonomie und angrenzenden Fachgebieten. Nach dem Wechsel von Bonn wird das Netzwerk nun am Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) koordiniert.

Über das IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)