WI22-Q3: Implications of Child Incarceration for Maternal Wealth and Labor Force Attachment

Qualitative research suggests that mothers play a critical role in supporting adult children both during and after experiences of incarceration, yet the implications of incarceration for mothers have been relatively unexplored in existing research. Using mother-child linked data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the NLSY79 Child and Young Adult study, we investigate whether the incarceration of a child at any age after 14 appears to influence mother’s economic outcomes as measured by maternal wealth and maternal labor supply. We also analyze whether accounting for child incarceration history helps to explain the racial wealth gap. We find significant relationships between child incarceration and maternal wealth, but the importance of current versus prior child incarceration depends on the type of wealth considered. We also find that child incarceration appears to be much more detrimental in dollar terms for white women than black or Hispanic women, but the financial asset penalty associated with child incarceration is larger in percentage terms for black women than for white women. Lastly, we find a statistically significant and negative relationship between maternal labor supply and child incarceration with bigger effect sizes for white and married women. As we discuss in the conclusion, these findings suggest that child incarceration—the burdens of which mothers disproportionately bear—may contribute to gender inequality in Social Security benefit amount and Supplemental Security Income eligibility in old age.