Sarah Font, Washington University, Professor, Social Work
Title: Children, Parents, and the Carceral State: Revisiting Convention Wisdom
Abstract: For several decades, research studies have indicated that parental incarceration, and especially paternal incarceration, imposes harm to children’s health and wellbeing. However, key questions about causality, conditionality, and mechanisms remain unresolved. This presentation shares new findings from a large-scale administrative data project in Wisconsin (NICHD R01HD107154). Leveraging linked administrative data, this body of work reassesses the effects of parental incarceration on children using multiple methodologies, including future-treatment counterfactuals, difference-in-differences, and instrumental variables. The project demonstrates that parent criminal legal contact generally, but especially maternal incarceration, evokes substantial and sometimes permanent changes in children’s care arrangements. Yet, regardless of modeling approach, the project identifies null to modestly positive effects of parental incarceration on child safety, education, and health outcomes.
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