Room: Upson 117
Time: Mon 08:30 AM-10:00 AM

Childhood Health

Chair: George Wehby

Session Description

This session brings together new research that focuses on understanding the links between socioeconomic status and childhood health outcomes. Fletcher presents new evidence on the income gradient in childhood health using two newly created panels of children in the US in order to leverage both more precise measures of permanent income as well as allow an examination of both contemporaneous and cumulative effects of family income on childhood health and specific chronic conditions. This unique data also allows controls for environment and family level influences and will be able to focus on inspecting potential mechanisms of the income gradient in childhood health and whether the effects increase as the child ages, as is often found in the literature. Frisvold links socioeconomic status with childhood health by focusing on the health and achievement effects of the school breakfast program. He uses a regression discontinuity design in order to eliminate the substantial selection effects into the program that have clouded the findings of earlier literature. Finally, Wolfe brings a highly innovative research focus to the question of the mechanisms linking socioeconomic status to childhood health by analyzing brain imaging data. The authors are then able to investigate mechanisms through brain development by using a longitudinal sample of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Together this focused session allows broad coverage of the topic of socioeconomic status effects on childhood health by providing new nationally representative evidence from panel data, an examination of specific poverty programs, and new data from brain imaging in an effort to elucidate mechanisms and suggestion potential future policy interventions.

Key Terms None Listed

Session Organizer: Jason Fletcher (Yale University)

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Presentations

1. New Evidence of the Income Gradient in Childhood Health

   Presenter: Jason Fletcher (Yale University)

   Discussant: Angela Fertig (University of Georgia)

2. Nutrition and Cognitive Achievement: An Evaluation of the School Breakfast Program

   Presenter: David Frisvold (Emory University)

   Discussant: Mayu Fujii (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

3. Socioeconomic differences in Anatomical brain development; a missing link between SES and health?

   Presenter: Barbara Wolfe (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

   Discussant: Nicole Hair (University of Wisconsin-Madison)