Home | About the Forum | Publications | Data Sources | Help

America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2009

Secure Parental Employment

Secure parental employment reduces the incidence of poverty and its attendant risks to children. Since most parents who obtain health insurance for themselves and their children do so through their employers, a secure job can also be a key variable in determining whether children have access to health care. Secure parental employment may also enhance children's psychological well-being and improve family functioning by reducing stress and other negative effects that unemployment and underemployment can have on parents.^36,37 One measure of secure parental employment is the percentage of children whose resident parent or parents were employed full time during a given year.

Indicator ECON2: Percentage of children ages 0–17 living with at least one parent employed year round, full time by family structure, 1980–2007

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements.

The percentage of children who had at least one parent working year round, full time was 77 percent in 2007, down from 78 percent in 2006 and below the peak of 80 percent in 2000. This proportion has remained relatively high, given its historical context; in the early 1990s, the proportion was 72 percent.
In 2007, 89 percent of children living in families maintained by two married parents had at least one parent who worked year round, full time. In contrast, 66 percent of children living in families maintained by a single father and 47 percent of children living in families maintained by a single mother had a parent who worked year round, full time.
Children living in poverty were much less likely to have a parent working year round, full time than children living at or above the poverty line (32 percent and 87 percent, respectively, in 2007). In 2007, 54 percent of children living in families maintained by two married parents who were living below the poverty line had at least one parent working year round, full time, compared with 92 percent of children living at or above the poverty line.
Black, non-Hispanic children and Hispanic children were less likely than White, non-Hispanic children to have a parent working year round, full time. About 72 percent of Hispanic children and 64 percent of Black, non-Hispanic children lived in families with secure parental employment in 2007, compared with 82 percent of White, non-Hispanic children.
In 2007, 32 percent of children in married two-parent families had both parents working year round, full time. This proportion is up from its most recent low in 2003 (29 percent).

table icon ECON2 HTML Table

³⁶ Mayer, S.E. (1997). Income, employment and the support of children. In R.M. Hauser, B.V. Brown, and W. Prosser. (Eds.), Indicators of children's well-being. New York, NY: Russell Sage Press.

³⁷ Smith, J.R., Brooks-Gunn, J., and Jackson, A.P. (1997). Parental employment and children. In R.M. Hauser, B.V. Brown, and W. Prosser. (Eds.), Indicators of children's well-being. New York, NY: Russell Sage Press.