Children's exposure to paternal imprisonment: Incidence, evolution, and correlates among young nonmarital children

Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 575–587

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Children's exposure to paternal imprisonment: Incidence, evolution, and correlates among young nonmarital children Yiyoon Chung ⁎ University of Wisconsin, School of Social Work, 1180 Observatory Drive, 3415 Social Science, Madison, WI 53706, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 26 June 2010 Received in revised form 21 October 2010 Accepted 22 October 2010 Available online 2 November 2010 Keywords: Imprisonment Parental incarceration Paternal imprisonment Nonmarital children Disadvantaged children Welfare reform

a b s t r a c t Although the well-being of nonmarital children has been the focus of recent public policy developments and academic research, relatively little is known about the risk of paternal imprisonment among these children. Particularly in a context of declining public assistance, the unprecedented imprisonment rate may place additional stress on nonmarital children if a substantial portion of their fathers are incarcerated and therefore unable to provide support. Research on this topic has been impeded by methodological difficulties, such as the lack of representative data on nonmarital children's fathers, and inaccurate or insufficient information on fathers' incarceration. Using unique combined administrative data sets from Wisconsin that largely overcome these methodological obstacles, I provide improved estimates of paternal imprisonment risk among young nonmarital children. I distinguish between point-in-time and cumulative risks and assess the length of paternal imprisonment, first considering only biological fathers and then also including the mothers' other partners. I also estimate the risks separately by socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Results suggest that nonmarital children face a high risk of paternal imprisonment, a substantial proportion also face an elevated risk of lengthy paternal imprisonment, and the racial disparity in risk is significant. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction A high level of paternal imprisonment can have a variety of largescale negative consequences for children. An increasing body of research has documented the potential negative effects of paternal incarceration on the subsequent economic, emotional, psychological, and developmental well-being of children (Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999; Hairston, 2002; Johnston, 1995; Murray, Janson, & Farrington, 2007; Swisher & Waller, 2008; Travis & Waul, 2003; Wakefield & Uggen, 2010; Western & Wildeman, 2009). Other studies have indicated that incarceration is associated with a reduced likelihood of marriage, which may in turn result in negative outcomes for children (Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999; Seltzer, 2000; Swisher & Waller, 2008; Western, Lopoo, & McLanahan, 2004). Given recent welfare reforms that imposed tighter eligibility constraints and time limits on welfare receipt, if fathers face a high risk of paternal imprisonment as well as an elevated risk of lengthy imprisonment, this may pose additional financial obstacles for many economically disadvantaged children. Before exploring policy options to improve the well-being of economically disadvantaged children in the context of mass imprisonment, it is essential to determine the number of children affected by paternal imprisonment. Due to the unprecedented increasing imprisonment rate in the U.S., which has been disproportionately concen-

⁎ Tel.: + 1 608 345 4682; fax: + 1 608 265 3119. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0190-7409/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.10.008

trated among the disadvantaged population (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008; West & Sabol, 2009; Western, 2002, 2006; Western & Pettit, 2005), many children born outside marriage (nonmarital children) may experience an increased risk of paternal imprisonment. However, only a few studies have estimated the paternal incarceration risk of children (Johnson & Waldfogel, 2002; Wildeman, 2009), and among those that have, a specific focus on nonmarital children has been rare. In this paper, I document the incidence, evolution, length, and socioeconomic and demographic correlates of paternal imprisonment among nonmarital children.1 Nonmarital children are a large and growing group; in 2008, nearly 41% of U.S. children were born to unwed mothers, up from 32.4% in 1997 (Hamilton, Martin, & Ventura, 2010; Ventura, Mathews, & Curtin, 1999). Research has suggested that these children may face a disproportionately high risk of paternal imprisonment (Western et al., 2004; Waller & Swisher, 2006). A high risk of paternal imprisonment may place nonmarital children, who already experience economic, social, and educational disadvantages, at a deepened risk for negative outcomes (Carlson & Corcoran, 2001; Halpern, 1999; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994).

1 Many unwed fathers live apart from their children during at least some portion of the children's lives (Carlson et al., 2008). Because living apart from their fathers is the predominant situation among nonmarital children and because the research and policy interest concerning children living in single-mother families and nonmarital children overlap, I also discuss the incarceration of noncustodial fathers and review related literature in this paper.

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In addition to the size and the vulnerability of the population of nonmarital children, I focus on this group because of their importance as a subject of public policy concern (Cancian, Meyer, & Cook, forthcoming; Sparks, 2003). Policy changes across the areas of welfare, child support, and the criminal justice system have not only disproportionately affected nonmarital children, but are also the focus of the debates that drive changes in key family policies that affect a broader group of disadvantaged children and their families (Sparks, 2003). Additionally, because nonmarital children disproportionately constitute the clients of the welfare, child support, and child welfare systems, if a substantial proportion of fathers of nonmarital children are incarcerated and therefore unable to support these children, the high rate of imprisonment may significantly undermine the effectiveness of recent welfare reforms and increase the strain on other public systems (Cancian, Heinrich, & Chung, 2009; Cancian, Noyes, Chung, & Thornton, 2009; Johnson & Waldfogel, 2002). Therefore, if paternal imprisonment is prevalent among these children, a discussion of paternal imprisonment is essential as scholars, administrators, and policymakers design and evaluate welfare, child support, and child welfare policies. However, little is known about the risk of paternal imprisonment among these children, and recent changes in family policies have been enacted without apparent consideration of this issue. Therefore, from a public policy standpoint, understanding paternal imprisonment risk is important, both to provide empirical evidence about the scale of the problem as well as to make a case for the importance of a perspective that integrates the interests of social systems that directly or eventually serve children and families. I identify four understudied issues in the research on paternal incarceration risk. First, while research on inmates suggests that the length of new incarceration sentences is long and has increased dramatically in the past two decades (Blumstein & Beck, 1999; Kling, 2006), because of data limitations, little research has explored the length of time minor children spend with a parent in prison. Second, the incarceration of other male partners of the mothers, especially those who have established themselves as father figures in the household regardless of paternity, may affect the economic well-being of all the children of the mothers (Berger, Carlson, Bzostek, & Osborne, 2008; Cancian et al., forthcoming), but no research exists on this topic. Next, although the portrait of paternal incarceration may differ depending on which measure a researcher adopts, existing studies of paternal (and parental) incarceration risk generally employ only one or two measures. Lastly, little research has attempted to identify correlates of the paternal imprisonment risk among nonmarital children. Using unique combined administrative data sets from the state of Wisconsin, in this paper I make a significant contribution toward understanding the risk of paternal imprisonment by estimating pointin-time and cumulative risks and assessing the length of paternal imprisonment, first considering the imprisonment of only biological fathers and then including the imprisonment of all partners of the mothers. Specifically, I follow nonmarital children born between 1997 and 2002 through early childhood. The matched administrative data sets include fairly complete and detailed longitudinal information on nonmarital fertility in Wisconsin and date-specific records of imprisonment in a Wisconsin state prison for both children's fathers and other males with whom the children's mothers bore subsequent children.2 By constructing and comparing various measures of paternal imprisonment, I examine the sensitivity of paternal imprisonment rates to the choice of definition and measurement. I also examine paternal imprisonment risk by socioeconomic and demographic characteristics such as child's race; mother's earnings and age; and rural, suburban, or urban residence. In the following sections, I review the related literature, describe the data sets used for the analysis, discussing their advantages and 2 In this study, the only partners considered are those with whom the mother had a child.

limitations, and report results. Findings across different measures suggest that nonmarital children experience a high risk of paternal imprisonment. I also document a significant racial disparity in imprisonment risk across measures. However, the estimates are sensitive to the choice of measure, which highlights the importance of longitudinal data. I conclude with a discussion of the ramifications of these results for economically disadvantaged children and families, as well as the implications for the intersection of child support, welfare, and the criminal justice system. 2. Literature review The literature review is divided into two sub-sections. In the first sub-section, I review general studies of (a) paternal incarceration and (b) nonmarital children (as well as children living in single-mother families) that are relevant to the current research in order to place it in a broader context. In the second sub-section, I focus on studies that deal with paternal incarceration risk for children; specifically, I review studies that use three types of data sources and explain ways in which data limitations have resulted in research gaps. 2.1. Studies of paternal incarceration and nonmarital children The pattern of mass imprisonment in the U.S. may have affected a large number of nonmarital children through an increased likelihood of paternal imprisonment. Although unwed fathers are less likely to be involved with their children compared to their married counterparts, recent research has suggested that unmarried fathers are more often than not involved with their children via both financial and nonfinancial assistance (Lerman & Sorensen, 2000; Waller & Swisher, 2006). Thus, the increased likelihood of paternal incarceration among nonmarital children may lead to a reduction in resources and support for many of these children, which may well be linked to a variety of negative consequences (Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999; Hairston, 2002; Johnston, 1995; Murray et al., 2007; Swisher & Waller, 2008; Travis & Waul, 2003; Wakefield & Uggen, 2010; Western & Wildeman, 2009). On the other hand, if many imprisoned fathers were not providing significant support before imprisonment, high paternal imprisonment risk among nonmarital children may not have large-scale consequences for the well-being of these children. Even prior to incarceration, incarcerated fathers tend to have lower income and are less likely to provide support for their children than those who are not currently or have never been incarcerated (Geller, Garfinkel, Cooper, & Mincy, 2009; Sorensen & Zibman, 2001; Swisher & Waller, 2008). Although this critique is an important point to consider, it does not necessarily diminish the significance of understanding paternal imprisonment risk among nonmarital children. Even when the effects of fathers' incarceration are estimated to be minimal given the past or current situation, understanding paternal imprisonment risk is a significant subject of policy concern because a high rate of paternal imprisonment can undermine the future success of other public policies, such as child support, welfare, and the proposed extension of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program to include noncustodial fathers, in encouraging these children's fathers to work and fulfill their parental responsibility (Chung, forthcoming; Wheaton & Sorenson, 2009). Moreover, emerging evidence suggests that many imprisoned noncustodial fathers provided support for their children prior to imprisonment, often a substantial amount (Cancian, Noyes, et al., 2009; Waller & Swisher, 2006).3 3 Moreover, it is possible that the incarceration of abusive and financially draining fathers can even provide financial gains and/or emotional relief. However, much research on families of prisoners has suggested that the removal of even inadequate fathers through incarceration has negative rather than positive impacts on children (Travis & Waul, 2003; Ziebert, 2006).

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Despite the significance of this topic, two major gaps, each of which has implications for measurement, persist in the literature on paternal incarceration. In the rest of this sub-section, I document these gaps: a lack of focus on the length of incarceration and a lack of consideration of a mother's other partners. First, beyond the increasing risk of imprisonment, studies of inmates suggest that incarceration duration is long and has increased over time (Blumstein & Beck, 1999; Kling, 2006); despite these findings, no studies have considered the length of time children spend with a father in prison. The paternal imprisonment length experienced by nonmarital children has significant implications across a variety of dimensions. At the policy level, the number of children who face lengthy imprisonment of their fathers is of interest because these children may need quantitatively and qualitatively different services. Lengthy incarceration may also be more disruptive of the social and emotional bonds a father has with both his children and the mother(s) of his children (Braman & Wood, 2003; Hagan & Palloni, 1990). Moreover, given the time limit for welfare receipt imposed by recent reforms, lengthy incarceration will pose particularly challenging problems for economically vulnerable families. The length of paternal incarceration may also be of interest at the methodological level because a few children with very long spells may represent a large proportion of all children with incarcerated fathers at any given point in time. However, considering the length of paternal incarceration, both in general and in studies of nonmarital children, has been challenging due to data limitations. A consideration of the other male partner(s) of unwed mothers is another aspect of the context that shapes the paternal imprisonment experiences of nonmarital children. An emerging body of literature demonstrates that a high proportion of mothers who have had a nonmarital birth will have children with more than one partner, often referred to as multiple-partner fertility or multipartnered fertility (Cancian et al., forthcoming; Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006; Manlove, Logan, Ikramullah, & Holcombe, 2008). Many children will come to live with and/or receive support from other male partners of their mothers and will share family resources with half-siblings (Cancian et al., forthcoming). Some studies suggest that many male partner(s) of a mother who are not a child's biological father but reside with a child—often called social fathers—engage with children as much as biological fathers at many levels (Berger et al., 2008). Therefore, the incarceration of a mother's other male partner(s) may have negative impacts on all the mother's children due to reduced family resources and support. However, no estimates of paternal incarceration risk that consider all male partners of the mother exist. Calculating estimates of incarceration of other partners of the child's mother is particularly challenging since most national data sets do not contain information about multiple-partner fertility. 2.2. Studies of paternal incarceration risk In this sub-section, I review studies of paternal incarceration risk that use nationally or state-wide representative samples, including studies of all children, nonmarital children, or children living in single-mother families with established child support orders. Three strands of literature that provide insight into the issue of paternal imprisonment risk among nonmarital children emerge from the literature review. These three literatures differ greatly in the focus of their samples and the characteristics of data sources used. Discussion of the three categories helps explain why paternal imprisonment risk has been understudied among nonmarital children. 2.2.1. Paternal incarceration risk: the first strand of literature Studies in the first strand of literature use the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities (SISFCF, or the Survey of Inmates) and calculate estimates for all children in the U.S., regardless of family structure (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008; Johnson & Waldfogel,

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2002; Mumola, 2000; Wildeman, 2009). Using the Survey of Inmates, Glaze and Maruschak (2008) provided point-in-time estimates of the percentage of children who had a parent imprisoned. Results showed that as of June 30, 2007, 2.3% of U.S. children had a parent in prison; the rates were 6.7% for black children and 0.9% for white children. Rates were measured at a given time (rather than at a given age) and were calculated for all minor children regardless of age.4 In contrast, in order to assess the prevalence of paternal imprisonment for children across the early life course, using the Survey of Inmates and other data sets including data from the National Vital Statistic's Natality Detail File, Wildeman (2009) constructed measures for two cohorts born in 1978 and 1990 and provided estimates of the cumulative paternal imprisonment risk for black and white children. Wildeman (2009) reported that by age 14, among children born in 1978, 2.2% of white and 13.8% of black children had spent some time with their fathers in prison, while among those born in 1990, 3.6% of white children and 25.1% of black children had spent some time with their fathers in prison. However, the Survey of Inmates has not inquired about noncustodial or nonmarital children.5 Therefore, studies based on these data have rarely paid attention to these groups. To the extent that nonmarital children have parents with characteristics different from the general population, the estimates of the risk of paternal imprisonment for all children calculated with Survey of Inmates data have limited implications for informing the paternal imprisonment risk for nonmarital children. 2.2.2. Paternal imprisonment risk: the second strand of literature Studies in the second strand of literature use nationally representative social survey data such as the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) (Sorensen & Zibman, 2001) or the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (Wildeman, 2009; the data used for sensitivity tests). Because low-income young men have unusually low rates of participation in social surveys, and unwed fathers are often only loosely attached to the households in which their children reside, attaining complete coverage of an appropriate sample is particularly challenging. Additionally, in contrast to the Survey of Inmates, which focused exclusively on inmates, household surveys often omit the institutionalized population. Finally, using household survey data to study racial disparities is particularly troublesome because rates of under-representation differ by race (Hernandez & Brandon, 2002). Because the survey samples do not include information about hardto-identify missing fathers, some studies that have estimated the percent of institutionalized noncustodial fathers have relied largely on assumptions about the characteristics of missing fathers (Sorensen & Zibman, 2001). Using NSAF, Sorensen and Zibman (2001) focused on noncustodial fathers who were poor and not paying child support in 1997 and estimated that 29% of these fathers were institutionalized in some form that year. However, this estimate depends heavily on the authors' assumptions about the characteristics of the institutionalized fathers. In fact, some evidence from recent research (Cancian, Noyes, et al., 2009; Western, 2002) suggests that Sorensen and Zibman's (2001) assumption may have led them to overestimate the proportion of incarcerated fathers among the poor fathers who do not pay child 4 Another example of this line of research is the work of Johnson and Waldfogel (2002); the authors used the 1997 Survey of Inmates but used a year-long observation window. The authors estimated that at any time in 1997, about 1.32 million children had a parent in either state (1.2 million) or federal (0.12 million) prison. 5 Because the survey asked about whether the inmate had any custodial children prior to incarceration and the total number of children, if it had additionally asked the number of custodial children, researchers might have been able to estimate the number of noncustodial children. However, there was no question asking about the number of custodial children. Additionally, the survey did not ask whether the respondent had any marital (or nonmarital) children. Therefore, estimates of paternal risk among nonmarital children or children living in single-mother families were not available without the introduction of additional substantial assumptions about unwed (or noncustodial) incarcerated fathers.

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support. In general, the necessity of making assumptions about inmates and their families renders the task of using survey data to estimate noncustodial and/or unwed fathers' incarceration rates all the more difficult. 2.2.3. Paternal incarceration risk: the third strand of literature The third strand of literature focuses on nonmarital children and/or single-mother families who have established formal child support orders; these studies use two data sources that more thoroughly include nonmarital children's fathers compared to the surveys reviewed above: (1) the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS, or the Fragile Families Study) and (2) longitudinal administrative data from the formal child support enforcement system, especially data from the state of Wisconsin. Improved representation of nonmarital children's fathers or noncustodial fathers is either a result of specific survey designs addressing this issue (FFCWS) or the comprehensive nature of the administrative data. First, FFCWS is an important data resource that allows researchers exploring paternal incarceration risk to surmount many of the shortcomings of other surveys.6 The survey interviewed unwed and married fathers at the hospital immediately following the child's birth, when many fathers were present and willing to be interviewed, as well as asking mothers for information about their children's fathers, including their incarceration histories (Reichman, Teitler, Garfinkel, & McLanahan, 2001).7 Including both marital and nonmarital children, Waller and Swisher (2006) estimated that by the time of the first-year interview (12–18 months following the focal child's birth), the cumulative estimate of paternal post-natal incarceration was 11.7%. However, the FFCWS data are not without limitations as a source of comprehensive information about paternal incarceration risk. The data do not allow researchers to accurately examine the length of time children spent with a parent in prison. In addition, the survey does not provide information about the incarceration of mothers' other partners. Further, the data pertain only to nonmarital children in large U.S. cities. The Wisconsin longitudinal administrative data used in the current study provide an opportunity to offset some of the limitations of the FFCWS data. The data from the child support system include information on a fairly large proportion of the nonmarital births that occurred in Wisconsin (the data are described in greater detail in the Data and methods section). The merged data from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) allow researchers to consider imprisonment length and the imprisonment of other male partners of mothers. One of the advantages of the data is that they include births in rural, suburban, and urban areas, thereby facilitating comparisons of risk across these areas (Cancian et al., forthcoming). The analysis of Ha, Cancian, Meyer, and Han (2008) is of particular interest for the current study, as the authors combined similar data sources. Ha et al. (2008) briefly discussed paternal imprisonment, although their primary goal was to examine the multiple factors associated with nonpayment of child support. The authors showed that 3.8% and 6.3% of noncustodial fathers had been incarcerated in the first and sixth years, respectively, following the first child support (marital or nonmarital) order. The baseline for the Ha et al. (2008) study was the establishment of child support orders; this differs from the current study's approach of using the child's birth as a baseline. If a 6 The survey collected data on approximately 3600 nonmarital births as well as a comparison group of about 1100 marital births (between 1998 and 2000) in large cities; when weighted, the samples are representative of all nonmarital births to parents residing in cities with populations over 200,000 in the United States and nearly representative of births to married parents in large cities (Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006; Reichman et al., 2001). 7 The mothers' reports about their children's fathers are particularly helpful because they provide information on whether and how fathers in the sample differ from those who were missed (Reichman et al., 2001); they can be used to weight the missing fathers appropriately—an improvement from other survey data.

father was imprisoned between the child's birth and the establishment of a child support order, but was not imprisoned thereafter, the imprisonment was not identified in the Ha et al. (2008) study. If imprisonment leads to the establishment of child support orders that otherwise would not have been established,8 the paternal imprisonment risk following the child's birth would be higher than the estimates suggested by Ha et al. (2008). Building on these studies, the research in this paper contributes to the literature in four ways: I examine the length of time children spent with a father in prison, I consider the imprisonment of other male partners of mothers, I explore the sensitivity of paternal imprisonment risk estimates to choices concerning definition and/or measurement, and I estimate paternal imprisonment risk by socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. 3. Data and methods I use a unique set of data that includes fairly complete and detailed information about paternity and multiple-partner fertility from the Kids Information Data System (KIDS), and draw on data on nonmarital births between 1997 and 2008. The KIDS system also contains demographic information such as race,9 location of the child's residence,10 and date of birth. In addition, I use matched date-specific imprisonment records from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for the years between 1997 and 2007 to determine the imprisonment status of the nonmarital children's biological fathers and other male partners of the mothers before and after the children's births. I also use matched data from the Unemployment Insurance system (UI) from 1995 through 2008 to identify mothers' formal earnings.11 In the rest of this section, I outline the samples and measurements used for the analyses, and then discuss the advantages and limitations of the study data. 3.1. Sample and measurement approaches In the primary analysis, I follow 11,392 mothers' first-born,12,13 nonmarital children (focal children) born between 1997 and 2002. All cases meet the following selection criteria: the mother is the custodial parent, the child's date of birth is known, and the biological father of the child is known. For details of the sample selection for the analysis,

8 This may be possible because for some couples, the imprisonment of the father will lead to a decline in economic resources for the mother, leading her to apply for public income support, which generates a requirement to cooperate with child support, resulting in an order. Additionally, in many states, the criminal justice system cooperates with the child support system in pursuing child support. Although no estimates are available, anecdotal cases suggest that incarceration sometimes leads to a new child support order, if orders were not yet established. 9 Out of about 2439 children with missing information on race (21% of the sample), the race of 1672 (about 15%) children's mothers was known and therefore used for imputation; among the 15% of children whose race was imputed, 2% had black mothers and 11% had white mothers. 10 I categorized the area of residence into the following four categories: multiple counties within five years following birth, Milwaukee, urban counties, and rural counties, following the strategy used in Cancian et al. (forthcoming). 11 UI earnings records are reported to be highly accurate measures for formal earnings, providing various advantages over survey reports, although they do not capture informal earnings and about 10% of formal earnings (Wallace & Haveman, 2007). 12 I focus on first-born nonmarital children to provide a clearer picture of the issue and to achieve findings that can be more easily generalized to a larger population across areas. This is partly because researchers have established better knowledge of the data issues concerning the first-born children in Wisconsin's administrative data, compared to subsequent children (Brown & Cook, 2008; Cancian et al., forthcoming); therefore, focusing on first-born children helps determine the quality of the data used in this study as well as the data limitations and their implications (e.g., the coverage of the first-born children included in Wisconsin's administrative data system). 13 In addition to the primary analysis focused on first-born nonmarital children (shown in Table 1), in Table 2, I estimate the paternal imprisonment risk for children born to the second partner of the mother.

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579

18% Percent of Children with Biological Fathers Currently in Prison

16% 14%

Percent of Children with Biological Fathers Who Have Ever Been in Prison Since Child's Birth

12%

Percent of Children with Biological Fathers or Mother's Other Partners Currently in Prison

10% 8%

Percent of Children Whose Biological Fathers or Mother's Other Partners Have Ever Been in Prison Since Child's Birth

6%

Percent of Children Whose Biological Fathers Have Been Incarcerated Over 12 Months Since Child's Birth

4% 2% 0% 1

7

13

19

25

31

37

43

49

55

Percent of Children Whose Biological Fathers or Mother's Other Partners Have Been Incarcerated Over 12 Months Since Child's Birth

Months after birth Data:Wisconsin Child Support Data (KIDS) and Prison Records from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, A Stratified Random Sample of Unmarried Mother's First Children Born between 1997 and 2002 (N=11,392). Notes: In measuring fathers' imprisonment, the daily observation window is used at the end of each month following the child's birth (the 60 months after the child's birth are considered). While the first observation is measured at the exact date of the child's birth, subsequent observations are measured at the last day of each of the full months after the child's birth. Weights are applied; for details of weights, sampling scheme, and sample construction, see Appendix A. Graph 1. Paternal imprisonment risk for first-born nonmarital children in the first five years of life.

including the number of cases excluded in each step, as well as sampling and weighting strategies, see Appendix A. All results shown in this study are weighted according to the sampling scheme. In order to provide improved estimates of paternal imprisonment risk among mothers' first-born nonmarital children, I document (1) estimates of the point-in-time risk of paternal imprisonment for (a) only birth fathers and (b) birth fathers or other male partners of the children's mothers; (2) estimates of cumulative risk of postnatal paternal imprisonment for (a) only birth fathers and (b) birth fathers or any other male partners of the children's mothers; and (3) cumulative estimates of post-natal imprisonment exceeding 12, 24, and 36 months for (a) only birth fathers and (b) birth fathers or any other male partners of the children's mothers. In addition, I estimate paternal imprisonment risk by child's race, urban/suburban/ rural residence, and mother's age and earnings. In measuring both point-in-time and cumulative risk of fathers' imprisonment, I use date-specific records of the fathers' imprisonment and identify the fathers' imprisonment status measured as of the last day of each of the five years (with the exception of Graph 1, for which I used imprisonment status measured as of the last day of each month). In measuring the imprisonment of other partners of the mother, I identified the imprisonment of other partners only after the other partner had a baby (the focal child's half-sibling) with the mother. To explore the issue of lengthy imprisonment, I examine the percent of children who spent more than 12, 24, and 36 months (and 60 months in an alternative sample) with their fathers in prison at each age.

3.2. Limitations and advantages of the study data Several limitations are noteworthy. First, although the data include substantial information on nonmarital fertility, coverage is incomplete; in cases in which paternity has not been established, there are no data on fathers.14 To examine the extent of missing cases, I utilize 14 When a mother applies for welfare, the case is referred to the child support agency. Therefore, even for cases in which the father is hard to locate and child support orders are not established, KIDS contains information about the father if the mother has applied for welfare. In addition, KIDS contains information for any child whose parent initiated contact with the child support agency to help with paternity establishment, locating a noncustodial parent, establishing (or changing) a child support order, or collecting a child support order (Cancian et al., forthcoming).

studies of nonmarital births in Wisconsin (Brown & Cook, 2008; Cancian et al., forthcoming) to calculate an estimate of the coverage of first-born nonmarital children, born between 1997 and 2002 in Wisconsin, considered in the study. I estimate that about 81% of targeted children are included in this study.15 In FFCWS, among the most representative survey data for nonmarital births, the response rate for unmarried mothers and fathers was 87% and 75%, respectively, at the baseline survey, which is approximately the time of the child's birth (Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006). Therefore, the coverage of nonmarital children in the current study is quite good (for a related argument, see Cancian et al., forthcoming). Moreover, due to the nature of the matched administrative data used in the current study, I expect that little attrition occurred among the fathers over time16; this is one advantage of the matched administrative data compared to survey data. For example, in FFCWS, at the time of the third-year interview (between 36 and 42 months after the child's birth), the response rate for mothers and fathers was about 76% and 58%, respectively (Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006). The missing data could affect the results of my study in two major ways. First, if the missing fathers have a different imprisonment risk, the estimated paternal risk across measures will be biased. The data are likely to miss nonmarital births that are followed shortly by parents' marriage or long-lasting cohabitation. My estimates will be upwardly biased to the extent that these cases comprise the missing cases, given that fathers in stable relationships with mothers are less likely to be incarcerated.17 Carlson, McLanahan, and Brooks-Gunn (2008) noted that the Fragile Families Study is most representative of cohabiting fathers (90% response rate) and least representative of fathers who were not romantically involved with the child's mother at

15 Comparing vital records birth registration with KIDS records, Brown and Cook (2008) reported that about 86% of first-born nonmarital children born in 1997 had records in KIDS, and Cancian et al. (forthcoming) estimated that 81.5% of first-born nonmarital children born in 1997 had paternity established within 10 years. Building on estimates provided by Cancian et al. (forthcoming), I estimate that I miss an additional 0.5% of first-birth nonmarital births compared to Cancian et al.'s work. Therefore, I estimate that the rate of coverage of first-born nonmarital children in my study is 81% (81.5 − 0.5 = 81.0). 16 There may be some attrition; for example if a father moved out of state and was incarcerated in another state, I do not have data on the father's incarceration. 17 However, this effect would be limited if these mothers receive welfare because, as explained earlier, welfare cases are required to be referred to the child support system.

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Table 1 Paternal imprisonment risk for first-born nonmarital children in the first five years of life. Child's age

Point-in-time risk of (post-natal) imprisonment Cumulative risk of (post-natal) imprisonment Length of paternal imprisonment

Of biological fathers

Of biological fathers or mother's other partner(s)

Of biological fathers Of biological fathers or mother's other partner(s) Of biological fathers Of biological fathers or mother's other partner(s) Over 12 months Over 24 months Over 36 months Over 12 months Over 24 months Over 36 months

Birth

1

2

3

4

5

2.0% 2.0% 2.0% 2.0% NR NR NR NR NR NR

3.8% 3.8% 5.2% 5.2% 1.3% NR NR 1.3% NR NR

4.9% 5.0% 8.1% 8.2% 3.8% 0.7% NR 3.8% 0.7% NR

5.5% 5.8% 10.5% 10.9% 6.3% 2.3% 0.4% 6.4% 2.3% 0.4%

6.0% 6.5% 12.6% 13.4% 8.3% 4.1% 1.4% 8.7% 4.2% 1.4%

5.9% 6.6% 14.3% 15.4% 10.2% 5.7% 2.6% 10.8% 6.0% 2.7%

Data: Wisconsin Child Support Data (KIDS) and Prison Records from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, A Stratified Random Sample of Unmarried Mother's First Children Born between 1997 and 2002 (N = 11,392). Notes: In measuring fathers' imprisonment, the daily observation window is used at the end of each of the five years following child's birth. Paternal imprisonment at age 0 is measured at the date of child's birth. Weights are applied; for details of weights, sampling scheme, and sample construction, see Appendix A. NR = not relevant.

the time of birth (38% response rate). In comparison, the Wisconsin data are likely to be less representative of nonmarital children whose biological parents get married or are in a stable relationship. This difference might lead to a higher estimate of paternal imprisonment incidence using Wisconsin administrative data compared to FFCWS. Second, in this study, I miss at least some subsequent partners of the mothers (particularly marital partners, and cases in which the mother is not a custodial parent or the father is not known). By construction, this omission will result in downwardly biased estimates of the imprisonment risk of mothers' other partners. The second major limitation is that my analyses are limited to incarceration in Wisconsin state prisons and do not include incarceration in other prison systems (e.g., local jails, federal penitentiaries, or out-of-state facilities). However, focusing on state (and federal) prisoners is not uncommon in the area of parental incarceration (for example, see Johnson & Waldfogel, 2002; Wildeman, 2009). The consequences of this type of restriction are relatively well known. In 2002 (in the middle of the study period), 59.5% of the incarcerated population was in state prisons, while the proportion in federal prisons and local jails was 7.5% and 32.7%, respectively (Harrison & Beck, 2003). In addition, in regard to lengthy incarceration—one of the foci of the study—the under-representation of children's paternal incarceration experiences will be less apparent because I include a high proportion of lengthy incarcerations, and most of the incarcerations I miss are short durations in local jurisdictions.18,19 A third major limitation is that imprisonment data are not available if Wisconsin inmates were sent to an out-of-state prison or if fathers were sentenced and incarcerated in another state (fathers might have moved out of state prior to incarceration). Information about the latter issue— the rate of fathers leaving Wisconsin during the study period—is not available. In contrast, regarding the former issue—the rate of fathers incarcerated in out-of-state prisons—some information is available and based on this, I provide some alternative estimates that account for this issue.20 For the reasons described above, the base results in the current 18

For example, in 2002, an estimated 83.8% of incarcerated prisoners whose sentences were more than one year, called sentenced prisoners, were incarcerated in state prisons, while 9.7% and 6.5% of sentenced prisoners were incarcerated in federal prisons or local jails, respectively. These estimates remained quite constant between 2000 and 2007 (West & Sabol, 2009). 19 On the other hand, it is possible that some fathers may go to jail multiple times in a year, and all of these incidents would be missed in the data utilized in the study. If so, this factor would cause a greater undercount of the extent to which some children have long periods of time with a father being incarcerated. 20 In the past, Wisconsin has sent a large number of inmates to out-of-state prisons; for example, 3482 Wisconsin inmates (an estimated 17.8% of Wisconsin state prisoners as of June 30, 2002) were incarcerated in an out-of-state prison in mid2002 (Harrison & Beck, 2003; State of Wisconsin, 2004). However, since 2002, the state has attempted to reduce the number of out-of-state inmates; the numbers decreased to 1890 and 899 in 2003 and 2004, respectively (State of Wisconsin, 2004).

study should be considered a conservative picture of paternal incarceration risk among nonmarital children. Lastly, because this study focuses only on Wisconsin cases, caution should be used when generalizing study findings to other parts of the nation. Nonetheless, incarceration rates in Wisconsin are generally comparable to national estimates, although racial disparity tends to be higher (Oliver, 2001; West & Sabol, 2009), and the economic characteristics of children with established paternity and child support orders in Wisconsin is also generally comparable with national estimates (Grall, 2009; Meyer, Ha, & Hu, 2008). However, no official estimate for the paternal imprisonment risk for Wisconsin marital children is available, so I cannot compare the risks of parental imprisonment for nonmarital children with children whose parents were married at the time of the child's birth. Therefore, it is somewhat unclear to what extent any differences between the risks of nonmarital children in Wisconsin, if found in the study, and the national estimate of the risks for all children, are due to the fact that the children included in this study are nonmarital, versus the fact they were born in Wisconsin. Despite the data limitations, there are unique advantages of the data used in this study. The major advantages of the data include: relatively complete coverage of nonmarital births; date-specific and accurate imprisonment information both for children's biological fathers and other male partners of the mothers; and a state-wide sample that includes urban, suburban, and rural areas. An additional advantage is noteworthy. In contrast to surveys, administrative data from the child support system has advantages for examining racial inequalities in paternal imprisonment because the child support system gathers data on a case whenever a mother applies for welfare or pursues a formal child support order—quite independent of fathers' characteristics that may be associated with racial disparities in data collection.21 4. Results Table 1 displays estimates of paternal imprisonment risk calculated via diverse measures over the first five years of childhood for first-born nonmarital children born between 1997 and 2002, and Graph 1 displays the information graphically. The first four rows deal with imprisonment risk (point-in-time and cumulative risks) regardless of imprisonment length, and the following rows document the rates of children who have experienced paternal imprisonment for more than 12, 24, and 36 months at each age. For each measure, I document imprisonment estimates first for biological fathers only and then for either biological 21 To study racial inequality in the risk of paternal incarceration is particularly challenging with survey data because black men are more likely than white men to be missing in a survey (Hernandez & Brandon, 2002); as a result, studies based on survey data tend to underestimate the racial disparity in incarceration.

Y. Chung / Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 575–587

fathers or other subsequent male partners of the mothers (i.e., the fathers of the focal child's half-siblings who share a mother).

4.1. Point-in-time and cumulative risk of paternal imprisonment through age five Results illustrate the sensitivity of estimates to the choice of measure and the timing of measurement with regard to the child's age. Two percent of nonmarital children were born while their biological fathers were in prison. At ages three and five, 5.5% and 5.9%, respectively, of children had a currently imprisoned biological father. As discussed previously, the current study only includes incarceration in a Wisconsin state prison. In order to provide a sense of the degree of the omission of incarceration in my study compared to other studies that include broader types of incarcerations, I provide some crude estimates (though the best possible) of the point-in-time risk using macro-level statistics from other resources; I do this only for the estimates of point-in-time risk because relatively few assumptions are needed for this measure and the process is relatively simple. I estimate that including incarceration in out-of-state prisons could increase the estimated point-in-time risk by about 7%, and including incarcerations in federal prisons and local jails could increase the estimated risk by about another 72%.22 If all types of incarcerations (in federal prisons, local jails, and out-of-state prisons) are considered, the best possible (though still crude) estimate of the point-in-time risk of incarceration of biological fathers is 10.6% when the child is five years old. Results also showed that including mothers' other partners raised the point-in-time estimates to 5.8% and 6.6% (from 5.5% and 5.9%) at ages three and five, respectively. The additional risk due to mothers' other partners is relatively modest because I began with a sample of mothers' first births; only 7.3% and 13.5% of these children had at least one half-sibling with whom they shared a mother by ages three and five.23,24 22 This estimate is based on estimated rates of Wisconsin state prisoners being incarcerated in out-of-state prisons (Harrison & Karberg, 2003; State of Wisconsin, 2004). This estimate can be considered crude because I make some assumptions that are not testable given the limited data; for example, I assume that the rates of out-ofstate prisoners for Wisconsin's general imprisoned population were the same as those for nonmarital children's fathers over the time considered. 23 Compared to Cancian et al. (forthcoming), who used Wisconsin's administrative data on first-born nonmarital births in 1997, multiple-partner fertility rates are low in this study. For example, Cancian et al. reported that 12.3% and 23.4% of first-born nonmarital children had at least one half-sibling with whom they shared a mother at ages three and five, respectively. In contrast, in the current study, when I restrict the sample to births in 1997, the corresponding rates are 8.8% and 17.5%, respectively. This difference may have resulted from the current study's additional restriction of identifying other male partner(s) of the mothers. I identified a subsequent male partner only if the mother is the custodial parent of the half-sibling and the biological father of the half-sibling is known; this differs from Cancian et al.'s base estimates. 24 As discussed, the data used in the study is limited in identifying all subsequent partners of the mothers for a few reasons. First, if a mother was married with a subsequent partner and remained married, I do not have data on births within the subsequent marriage. The second issue is that I identify a subsequent male partner only if the mother is the custodial parent of the half-sibling and the biological father of the half-sibling is known. Building on Wu, Bumpass, and Musick (2001) and Cancian et al. (forthcoming), for my upper bound, my extreme estimate of the proportion of my omission of the mother's subsequent partners in the study is 25% by age five. To estimate the rate of imprisonment of any of mothers' partners while considering such omission requires assumptions about the imprisonment rate for the missing subsequent partners. If I assume that these missing subsequent partners were not incarcerated at all, the rate of imprisonment of any mothers' partners will not change. In contrast, if I assume that partners were missing at random and that they had the average imprisonment risk shown in my base sample, accounting for the missing subsequent fathers listed above suggests that the upper bound point-in-time estimate of imprisonment of any of mothers' partners in a Wisconsin state prison reaches 7.9% when the child reaches the age of five. In addition to the assumption that fathers were missing at random, if all types of incarcerations (in federal prisons, local jails, and outof-state prisons) are considered, one crude estimate of point-in-time risk of incarceration of any mothers' partners is 14.2% when the child is five years old.

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I used a day-long observation window of imprisonment for these analyses; when I used a year-long observation window,25 8.4% and 9.4% of nonmarital children experienced paternal imprisonment at any time during the third and fifth year, respectively, following birth. Compared to the yearly estimates provided by Ha et al. (2008), which indicated that 6.3% of fathers were imprisoned in the sixth year following their first child support order, the current analyses yielded a higher estimate of paternal imprisonment risk. Some of the difference may reflect the fact that some noncustodial fathers without child support orders prior to incarceration were issued child support obligations as a result of incarceration. Not surprisingly, estimates of paternal incarceration increased when I considered cumulative risks. By ages three and five, 10.5% and 14.3% of nonmarital children had spent at least some time with their father in prison. When I considered other male partners of the mother, the rates increased to 10.9% and 15.4% by ages three and five, respectively. The estimates of both the point-in-time and cumulative risks of paternal imprisonment in this study tend to be smaller than the estimates of paternal incarceration from the analyses of FFCWS. Using FFCWS, earlier studies reported that 3% of (marital or nonmarital) fathers were incarcerated in either prison or jail at the child's birth (Geller et al., 2009). Since the estimate is for all children, marital or nonmarital, if the sample is restricted to nonmarital children, the risk estimate will likely increase. Using FFCWS and restricting the sample to children of nonresident fathers,26 Swisher and Waller (2008) reported that 7.3% of these children had a biological father in either jail or prison at the time of the third-year survey (between 36 and 42 months after the child's birth). Swisher and Waller (2008) also showed that by the time of the third-year survey, 19.5% of the children had a biological father who had been incarcerated at some point since the child's birth (but were not currently incarcerated). One can expect the FFCWS to produce larger estimates across measures, even given a sample of nonmarital children, for three reasons. First, the current study focuses only on incarceration in a Wisconsin state prison for sample fathers whose children are Wisconsin residents, while FFCWS measures paternal incarceration across state prisons from multiple states, as well as jails and federal prisons. Second, FFCWS data represent urban nonmarital births while this study includes state-wide nonmarital births in Wisconsin, and paternal incarceration may be more prevalent in large cities; the results shown below in Table 2 are consistent with this idea.27 The third factor leading to different estimates is that studies using FFCWS include children who are not necessarily the first-born, while the primary analysis of the current study focuses only on first-born children of unwed mothers. As discussed and shown below (in Table 2), children who are born to subsequent partners tend to face a higher incarceration risk. These three factors likely increase the FFCWS estimates, relative to the estimates in this study. In contrast, at least two factors likely have the opposite influence. It is possible that FFCWS experienced some under-reporting problems, as shown in qualitative work (Waller & Swisher, 2006). In addition, FFCWS includes a larger proportion of fathers who had stable relationships with the children's mothers compared to the child support system data used in this study, and fathers in more stable relationships may have lower incarceration rates. These final two sample differences may counteract the upward influence of the three factors mentioned above on FFCWS estimates. 25 In this measurement, I considered the father to be imprisoned if the father was imprisoned at any time during the year considered. 26 Swisher and Waller (2008) also restricted their sample to children of fathers of blacks, whites, or Latinos. 27 On the other hand, as indicated earlier in my data limitation discussion, Wisconsin nonmarital children may differ from their counterparts in other states, whose information is not available to the best of my knowledge; this difference may or may not lead to higher estimates in this study compared to those using the FFCWS data.

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Table 2 Paternal imprisonment risk for children born to the second male partners of the mothers in the first five years of life. Child's age Birth Point-in-time risk of (post-natal) imprisonment

Of biological fathers 2.9% Of biological fathers or mother's other partner(s) 12.8% Cumulative risk of (post-natal) imprisonment Of biological fathers 2.9% Of biological fathers or mother's other partner(s) 12.8% Length of imprisonment Of biological fathers Over 12 months NR Over 24 months NR Over 36 months NR Of biological fathers or mother's other partner(s) Over 12 months NR Over 24 months NR Over 36 months NR

1 5.2% 14.5% 7.2% 20.1% 1.6% NR NR 8.8% NR NR

2 6.4% 15.6% 10.5% 25.2% 5.3% 1.0% NR 15.4% 6.1% NR

3

4

5

6.8% 15.6% 13.1% 28.8% 8.1% 3.2% 0.5% 20.2% 11.0% 4.3%

7.0% 15.7% 15.3% 32.1% 10.2% 5.3% 2.1% 23.5% 15.1% 8.3%

6.9% 16.0% 17.0% 34.7% 12.2% 7.2% 3.6% 26.5% 18.2% 11.7%

Data: Wisconsin Child Support Data (KIDS) and Prison Records from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, A Sample of First-Birth Children between the Mothers (Unmarried at the Time When They Had Their First Births between 1984 and 2002) and the Mothers' Second Partners, Born between 1997 and 2002 (N = 5903). Notes: In measuring fathers' imprisonment, the daily observation window is used at the end of each of the five years following child's birth. Weights are applied; for details of weights, sampling scheme, and sample construction, see Appendix A. NR = not relevant.

Interestingly, consistent with patterns found in FFCWS analyses, the current results demonstrate that point-in-time estimates tend to increase over time, for example, from 2% at birth to 6.3% at age five. These findings demonstrate that children face a different risk of having a currently imprisoned father at different ages, and suggest that the risk may increase with age, at least before age five. Coupled with the policy concern that children of different ages face different developmental challenges and needs (Geller et al., 2009; Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999), increasing paternal incarceration risk over time— both point-in-time and cumulative—indicates that age-appropriate social services for children of incarcerated fathers are necessary. 4.2. Length of exposure to paternal imprisonment through age five In order to consider the length of paternal incarceration, I calculated the percent of children who had experienced a father's imprisonment lasting more than 12, 24, and 36 (not necessarily consecutive) months in prison at each point in time (first for biological fathers and then including other male partners of mothers). Although the omission of incarceration in local jails is a limitation of the data used in this study, the consequence of the limitation for these measures, which are restricted to longer incarcerations, will be smaller than that for other measures explored above (i.e., the pointin-time and cumulative risks) because I observe most incarcerations longer than a year (West & Sabol, 2009). By age five, more than 10% of nonmarital children had experienced their biological fathers being in prison more than 12 months. In other words, of the 14.3% of children whose birth fathers had been imprisoned by the time the child was aged five, 71% had fathers who had spent more than 12 months in prison.28 After age two-and-a-half, the percent of children who have spent over 12 months with their fathers in prison exceeds the percent of children with fathers currently in prison (for any duration). At age five, approximately 5% of nonmarital children had spent nearly half their life with their biological fathers in prison, and 2.6% had spent 60% of their life in this manner. To expand the understanding of paternal imprisonment length and explore the implications of the new time limit on welfare receipt (which varies by state but is usually 60 months or less), I follow a birth cohort of children born in 1998 for nine years and provide estimates of the

28 The remaining 29% include right-censored observations (i.e., cases in which the child's biological father was still in prison when the child turned five), left-censored observations (i.e., cases in which the child's biological father was in prison at the child's birth), and cases in which paternal imprisonment was shorter than 12 months.

percent of children who had experienced more than 60 months of paternal imprisonment at each age.29 The results (shown in Appendix B) illustrate that 3.2% of children born in 1998 had spent over 60 months with their biological fathers in prison by age nine. In short, the findings indicate that both the risk of incarceration and the length of incarceration constitute a problem and deserve attention; children who face paternal imprisonment for an extended length of time may require a unique set of social services and long-term interventions. This information has implications for the issue of paternal imprisonment in conjunction with the time limit imposed on welfare receipt. Lengthy imprisonment also creates additional challenges for the child support system; because the system does not always reflect fathers' incarceration status (Meyer et al., 2008), fathers often accumulate large child support debt during imprisonment, which is reported to discourage fathers' subsequent work and support for their children (Cancian, Heinrich, et al., 2009; Harris, Evans, & Beckett, 2010; Turetsky, 2007). 4.3. A sensitivity test: estimates for children born to second partners of mothers In Table 2, I repeat the analyses shown in Table 1 using nonmarital children born to the second partners of the mothers.30 At birth, 2.9% of these children had biological fathers currently in prison, and including other partners of mothers increased the rate to 12.8%. For these children, the imprisonment risks of both their own fathers and other partners of the mothers are higher compared to the risks for first-born children (both rates for first-born children are 2.0%). A higher risk of imprisonment of biological fathers in this secondary analysis is expected, given the positive correlation between incarceration and multiple-partner fertility (Western & McLanahan, 2000); it may be a simple correlation, or it is possible that incarceration in some way leads to multiple-partner fertility by destabilizing the existing relationship (Western et al., 2004). In addition, compared to the primary analysis that focused on first-born children, a higher imprisonment risk for all other male partners of the mothers is

29 In Appendix B, I use data on subsets of children born relatively early and late in the sample to calculate paternal imprisonment risk by birth cohort (for those born in 1998 or 2002) in order to provide separate risks by cohort and, for the early cohort, to assess paternal imprisonment risk between ages zero and nine. As a complement to the results using thresholds of 12, 24, and 36 months in the main analyses, I also provide estimates of the percent of children in the early cohort who experienced paternal imprisonment for more than 60 months between ages zero and nine. 30 For this analysis, I use 5903 first-birth nonmarital children between the mothers (unmarried at the time when they had their first births between 1984 and 2002) and the mothers' second partners, born between 1997 and 2002.

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Table 3 Paternal imprisonment risk by family demographic characteristics in the first five years of life of first-born nonmarital children (in %). N

Cumulative risk of imprisonment of biological fathers (percent of children with biological fathers who have ever been in prison since child's birth)

Point-in-time risk of imprisonment of biological fathers (percent of children with biological fathers currently in prison) Age

Age

Percent of children whose biological fathers were in prison over 12 months since child's birth Age

0

1

2

3

4

5

0

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

Race Black White Hispanic Other Missing

2961 6517 807 340 766

3.5 1.5 1.3 2.4 1.0

6.7 2.8 3.2 3.4 1.8

8.8 3.5 4.0 6.0 2.2

10.3 3.8 4.4 4.8 2.9

11.2 4.1 4.5 6.1 3.2

10.9 4.1 5.2 5.2 3.3

3.7 1.6 1.4 2.4 1.1

9.3 3.7 4.1 4.7 2.4

14.7 5.7 6.0 8.5 4.0

19.6 7.3 7.8 10.4 5.4

23.4 8.8 9.9 12.3 6.9

26.2 10.0 11.6 13.8 8.1

2.4 0.9 1.0 1.2 0.9

6.8 2.8 3.2 3.9 2.0

11.6 4.4 4.8 6.5 3.0

15.6 5.8 6.3 8.5 4.1

18.9 7.1 7.9 10.7 5.6

Residence Milwaukee Urban Rural *Multiple

2908 4493 2184 1807

2.9 1.7 1.4 1.8

5.4 3.5 2.5 3.5

7.2 4.3 3.3 4.7

8.3 4.6 3.8 5.4

9.0 5.1 3.9 5.8

9.1 4.8 4.0 5.9

3.0 1.9 1.5 1.9

7.6 4.6 3.3 4.8

12.1 7.0 5.2 7.6

16.1 9.0 6.7 10.0

19.2 10.8 8.0 12.4

21.7 12.2 9.1 13.9

1.8 1.2 0.9 1.3

5.4 3.4 2.6 3.8

9.4 5.4 4.2 6.1

12.6 7.1 5.5 8.0

15.4 8.7 6.7 9.9

Mother's age Under 18 18–20 21–23 24–27 28+

2351 4622 2353 1102 963

2.2 2.2 2.0 1.1 1.3

4.7 4.3 3.4 2.0 2.3

6.9 5.3 4.0 2.7 2.9

8.2 6.0 4.2 2.7 3.1

9.3 6.4 4.2 3.2 3.3

9.5 6.1 4.2 3.3 3.3

2.4 2.4 2.1 1.3 1.4

6.1 5.9 4.6 2.9 3.1

10.7 8.9 6.7 4.5 4.7

14.5 11.6 8.6 5.6 6.1

18.2 13.7 9.9 6.8 7.1

21.1 15.3 11.1 8.0 7.8

1.5 1.5 1.3 0.7 0.8

4.8 4.3 3.4 1.9 2.3

8.5 6.8 5.3 3.4 3.7

11.6 9.2 6.7 4.4 4.8

15.1 10.9 8.0 5.5 5.8

Mother's earnings None Reported $1–4999 $5000–9999 $10,000–19,999 $20,000+

2380 3805 2069 1989 1149

1.7 2.6 1.8 1.7 1.1

3.9 4.9 3.3 3.2 1.9

5.5 6.3 4.2 3.7 2.5

6.4 7.1 4.8 4.0 2.3

7.2 7.7 5.0 4.0 2.9

7.4 7.6 4.8 3.8 2.8

1.9 2.8 1.9 1.8 1.1

5.0 6.8 4.5 4.3 2.7

8.5 10.5 7.0 6.2 4.2

11.5 13.6 9.1 8.0 5.3

14.3 16.2 10.7 9.4 6.4

16.4 18.4 11.9 10.5 7.2

1.3 1.7 1.2 1.1 0.7

4.0 5.0 3.2 3.2 1.7

6.9 8.2 5.3 4.8 2.9

9.4 10.7 7.2 6.2 3.9

12.0 13.1 8.6 7.3 4.9

Data: Wisconsin Child Support Data (KIDS) and Prison Records from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, A Stratified Random Sample of Unmarried Mother's First Children Born between 1997 and 2002 (N = 11,392). Notes: Mother's earnings are measured during the year prior to child's birth, and mother's age is measured at the child's birth. In measuring fathers' imprisonment, the daily observation window is used at the end of each of the five years following child's birth. Paternal imprisonment at age 0 is measured at the date of the child's birth. Weights are applied; for details of weights, sampling scheme, and sample construction, see Appendix A. *Multiple refers to the cases in which children resided in more than one county, as identified through the KIDS system, within five years following the child's birth. Numbers may not add to totals due to rounding.

expected in this secondary analysis, because by definition the second child had one more person—the biological father of the mother's first child—to increase the risk of paternal imprisonment. Results suggest that if the analysis is expanded to include later-born children, paternal imprisonment risk may be increased. 4.4. Paternal imprisonment through age five by socioeconomic and demographic characteristics Table 3 includes estimates of paternal imprisonment risk for nonmarital children by the following family demographic and socioeconomic characteristics: child's race, mother's age and earnings, and location of child's residence. Children whose mothers had lower earnings faced a higher risk of paternal imprisonment. By age five, the children of mothers with no formal earnings and mothers who earned $1–$4999 faced a 16.4% and an 18.4% cumulative risk of biological fathers' imprisonment, respectively. These results are consistent with previous research demonstrating that families with low incomes are more likely to experience paternal incarceration (Wildeman, 2009) and suggest that even among nonmarital children, there is a disproportionate concentration of paternal imprisonment among disadvantaged children. Additionally, children born to unmarried mothers under age 18 face the highest paternal imprisonment risk among all maternal age groups; by age five, 21.1% of these children have had a biological father in prison. A consistent pattern of racial difference in paternal imprisonment occurred across measures and over the time considered. The risk of paternal imprisonment was smallest for white children and largest for black children, with risks for other racial groups falling in the middle. The disadvantage for black children is clear: Across measures, black

nonmarital children are approximately two-and-one-half times more likely than their white counterparts to experience paternal imprisonment. For example, 26.2% of black nonmarital children had experienced paternal imprisonment by age five, compared to 10% of their white counterparts.31 The racial disparities in imprisonment rates in Wisconsin have been higher than the national average due to a very high black imprisonment rate and a low white imprisonment rate (Oliver & Yocom, 2002); therefore, the racial disparity in imprisonment for a nationally representative study of nonmarital children may be lower than estimates calculated in this study. Comparing the statistics for white and black nonmarital children to those for all white and black children may be instructive. Using the Survey of Inmates, Wildeman (2009) found that, for all children (marital and nonmarital) born in 1990, 1.5% of white children and 14.9% of black children had spent some time with their fathers in prison by age six. Using the FFCWS and including both nonmarital and marital births, Geller et al. (2009) found that 53% of black and 12% of white children had fathers who had ever been incarcerated (including incarceration prior to the child's birth) by the time of the third-year interview. Although the estimated racial disparity in paternal imprisonment for nonmarital children observed in this study is notable, it is smaller

31 All else being equal, estimates of racial disparity in paternal imprisonment derived from survey data will provide lower estimates compared to estimates provided by the current study based on the child support system data because surveys generally under-represent unwed black fathers.

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than the estimated disparity for all children, marital or nonmarital, calculated in other studies (Geller et al., 2009; Wildeman, 2009). The racial disparity for nonmarital children is expected to be lower than that for all children because white children are less likely to be born outside of marriage32 and therefore, white nonmarital children may be more disadvantaged than black nonmarital children in relation to their own race’s average paternal imprisonment risk. Greater racial disparity in jail incarcerations relative to prison incarcerations (Oliver & Yocom, 2002) may be part of the reason FFCWS estimates of racial disparity in paternal incarceration are higher than the estimates in this study. I examine a new aspect of racial disparity in the current study: Racial disparity in incarcerations longer than a year across the early childhood of nonmarital children. I found that when the threshold of lengthy imprisonment is 12 months, the racial disparity in the length of paternal imprisonment is quite comparable to the disparity in paternal imprisonment incidence risk. Of all black nonmarital children, 18.9% spent more than 12 months with a father in prison by age five; 7.1% of all white nonmarital children had done so. Findings from the current analyses add to the literature by providing information about urban/rural/suburban differences in nonmarital children's experiences of paternal imprisonment. The analysis of paternal imprisonment by area of residence suggests that the risk is higher for children born in urban areas. These results have implications for the relevant FFCWS statistics (restricted to urban births); if the Fragile Families Study had included births outside urban areas, the estimated paternal imprisonment rate would have been lower. I examine Milwaukee (which would otherwise have been categorized as an urban area) separately, due to its unique demographic characteristics; three-fourths of the African Americans in Wisconsin live in Milwaukee (Oliver, 2001) and one-third of the nonmarital births in Wisconsin occur in the city (Cancian et al., forthcoming). Results of analyses using the Milwaukee sample show that paternal imprisonment is uniquely high in Milwaukee; by age five, 21.7% of first-born nonmarital children had a biological father who had been in prison since the child's birth.

5. Discussion and conclusion Although estimates vary depending on measures, overall, the results in this study indicate that nonmarital children are at a high risk of experiencing paternal imprisonment. Moreover, lengthy paternal imprisonment is a significant risk for these children, as some spent a substantial part of early childhood with a father in prison. Including other male partners of mothers in the analyses increased the estimates of risk. Children who are economically disadvantaged, are members of racial minority groups, and have teenage mothers face a particularly high paternal imprisonment risk. Nonetheless, the results are a conservative picture of nonmarital children's experiences with fathers' contact with the criminal justice system because the study focuses only on fathers' incarceration in state prisons. Nonmarital children appear to experience a higher risk of paternal incarceration compared to children born to married parents. For example, Wildeman (2009) estimated that all black and white children's risk of experiencing paternal imprisonment by age six was 14.9% and 1.5%, respectively; in this study, I estimated that the risk by age five was 26.5% and 10.0%, respectively.33 However, as mentioned in the discussion of data limitations, this study focuses 32 In 2005, the nonmarital birth rate for black women was 67.8, while the rate for white women was 30.1 (Solomon-Fears, 2008). 33 I discuss the estimate of Wildeman (2009) because he restricted incarceration to imprisonment, consistent with this study. Because estimates of the cumulative risk by exact age for all children are not available from his study, I show his estimates of the risk by race here.

solely on cases of nonmarital children in Wisconsin, so the result may have limited implications for the risk for nonmarital children in other states; this possibility merits further research. Different measures of paternal incarceration have substantively distinct meanings and policy implications, and estimates of different measures can vary for a variety of legitimate reasons. Nonetheless, methodological difficulties, including a lack of data that provide detailed longitudinal information about fathers' incarceration, have led much research on this topic to focus on one or two measures and sometimes to introduce assumptions and extrapolate information in the process of estimating paternal incarceration risk. By taking advantage of the unique opportunity provided by the matched longitudinal administrative data to calculate various key estimates, I examine the sensitivity of estimates to measurement; thus, this study allows a more nuanced understanding of how many nonmarital children are subject to paternal imprisonment at different points in time. Indeed, results illustrate the sensitivity of estimates to the choice of measure of paternal imprisonment risk, and highlight the importance of both longitudinal data and careful consideration of measurement methods. Diverse measures considered in the study include: point-in-time risks with different observation windows, cumulative risks, and lengthy incarceration with various thresholds of length. In addition, I considered the imprisonment of not only the child's biological father but also other male partners of the mother. A high risk of paternal imprisonment among nonmarital children is an increasingly problematic social issue. Much research has documented that paternal incarceration may facilitate a generational cycle of incarceration by reducing paternal support and placing many already vulnerable children at a high risk of facing (deepened) poverty and serious obstacles to relationships with their fathers, psychological development, education, and employment (Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999; Johnston, 1995; Johnson & Waldfogel, 2004; Murray et al., 2007; Swisher & Waller, 2008; Travis & Waul, 2003; Wakefield & Uggen, 2010; Western & Wildeman, 2009). Further, recent changes in public policies and macroeconomic environments have made the issue more troubling. Unlike its precursor AFDC, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) imposes time limits on the receipt of benefits, is not an entitlement program, and is not funded in a countercyclical manner; therefore, single-mother families are now more vulnerable to macroeconomic fluctuations (Cancian, Meyer, & Reed, 2010). The current economic downturn, high rates of paternal imprisonment, and often lengthy imprisonment spells may place exceptional economic stress on many nonmarital children who face a weakened social safety net. In addition, mass imprisonment may function as a barrier to the success of many public policies including child support, welfare, and child welfare, as well as the proposed expansion of EITC programs to include noncustodial fathers. In the child support and welfare systems, concerns about high paternal imprisonment rates and their effects on the operation of these systems are growing, but addressing the issue has been challenging. Because the issue is the consequence of a constellation of interacting functions of broader social systems, a single policy component may not address the problem effectively; in fact, addressing the issues in one local system may create new policy dilemmas. For example, given the time limit for welfare receipt imposed by welfare reform, lengthy incarceration will pose particularly challenging problems for economically vulnerable families. However, addressing the issue by eliminating the time limit on welfare receipt for children who face lengthy paternal incarceration would lead to a new welfare policy dilemma. Many observers would argue that such a policy would be unfair to families and fathers who work low-paying jobs but still support their children. Another example further illustrates this dilemma. In many states, incarcerated fathers accrue high levels of child support debt; this debt

Y. Chung / Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011) 575–587

undermines state child support collection, and some researchers have found it has the potential to discourage subsequent payments and the employment of fathers after release (Cancian, Heinrich, et al., 2009; Harris et al., 2010). Therefore, some local authorities have implemented programs that set the current level of child support to zero or forgive child support debts for incarcerated fathers, which would potentially increase fathers' support for their children after release (Cancian, Heinrich, et al., 2009). However, this raises the question of whether it is fair to reward bad behavior by reducing debts, when the debts of fathers who work at low-paying jobs and try hard to make child support payments are not reduced. Those concerned about this policy argue that, in the eyes of fathers, such policies will make incarceration cheaper and therefore function as an incentive to attract low-income fathers to prison. The issue of prevalent paternal imprisonment for disadvantaged children is a concern across disciplinary boundaries. Because the problem of high paternal incarceration risk among disadvantaged children is connected to the broader policy context, the solutions may be as well. Within this context, researchers and advocates in the field have increasingly emphasized simultaneous efforts of multiple public policies that include ways to increase safety nets for families, augment labor market opportunities, and improve the educational system, all of which may reduce crime (Travis & Waul, 2003). These measures may help alleviate some of the policy dilemmas described above; for example, the incentive effect of a policy forgiving child support obligations during incarceration would decrease, given policies that support disadvantaged individuals and families and promote labor market opportunities, because the market will be increasingly more likely to provide an adequate alternative to behaviors leading to incarceration. In addition, others interested in the racial disparity in incarceration have supported measures to address criminal activities, including drug and violent offenses, with potentially more raceneutral consequences (Oliver, 2001). Although the most current policy trend is moving toward reducing incarceration rates, the direct economic expenses of maintaining correctional facilities and the resulting political pressure have largely driven this shift. However, many scholars have raised the concern that the government has allowed criminal justice policy decisions to develop without apparent regard for the collateral consequences for the families left behind as well as for other social systems that serve families (Blumstein & Beck, 1999; Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999; Mechoulan, 2006; Oliver, 2001; Travis & Waul, 2003). The implication of the current study is consistent with this concern, reflecting and making a case for the importance of societal discourse that views the well-being of economically vulnerable families as an important part of the social policy agenda and facilitates simultaneous evaluations and designs of multiple social systems that conjointly serve families. In short, in addition to prisoners themselves, children and families should be factored into decision-making in the criminal justice system (Hairston, 2002). When the problem and costs are viewed from a different perspective—particularly that of children who have no control over their situation, yet suffer the consequences of the decisions of both parents and society—the preferred solutions may differ. My research takes a significant step toward understanding the issue of parental imprisonment among nonmarital children by documenting its frequency. However, a high paternal incarceration risk among nonmarital children may or may not have a direct impact on nonmarital children. Identifying the causal effects of noncustodial fathers' incarceration is challenging, in part because of the correlation of unobserved characteristics of incarcerated fathers and the mothers of their children. Despite the progress of studies that attempt to make causal inferences about paternal incarceration effects, substantial room remains for subsequent research to address issues of unobserved heterogeneity and to provide more information about both the consequences of paternal incarceration for nonmarital children and the protective factors associated with paternal incarceration (Johnson

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& Waldfogel, 2002). Finally, future studies should simultaneously examine the incarceration of fathers and mothers. Acknowledgements Funding for this project was provided in part by the Graduate Research Fellow Dissertation Grant by the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP). This paper builds on research being conducted as part of the Milwaukee Prison Project under contracts between the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and the IRP. Any views expressed in this paper are those of the author and not necessarily those of the sponsoring institutions. The author thanks Maria Cancian for her insightful comments and suggestions, as well as her guidance and support throughout the project. The author thanks Katherine Thornton, Jane Smith, and the rest of the IRP programming staff for their sound construction of the data files used for this analysis; Steve Cook for his knowledgeable consultation on data issues and support; Jennifer Noyes for her work on the Milwaukee Prison Project, which greatly benefited this research; and the four anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. The author is grateful to Dan Meyer, Lawrence Berger, and Pam Oliver for their helpful comments and support. The author also thanks Dawn Duren for her assistance in preparing this manuscript and Jay Gates and Jennifer Eggerling-Boeck for editorial consultation. Appendix A. Sampling scheme, weighting, and sample construction 1. Original administrative data and sampling scheme In order to provide improved estimates of paternal imprisonment risk, we34 drew our initial sample from the Wisconsin child support system (KIDS data); the data include fathers in Wisconsin who were charged with a child support order in effect between 1997 and 2007 that identified them as legal payers in any KIDS cases. We used name and birth date to match data on those fathers to Department of Corrections (DOC) records of inmates incarcerated at some time during that period. Following this, we selected 10% of the fathers who were not matched to the records of inmates as described above. In contrast, we selected 100% of the fathers who were matched to the records of inmates.35 After we determined the aforementioned sample of fathers, we identified all court-ordered female payees who had a child whose birth date was known and whose biological father was in the previously described sample (i.e., children who were identified in the KIDS system as of the end of 2007). The resulting group of legal female payees constitutes the base sample of mothers in the study.36 The resulting sample is divided into two mutually exclusive groups, so that weights constructed from the perspective of the custodial mothers may be assigned. The two mutually exclusive samples are as follows: Group 1 includes 39,557 payees/mothers who have at least one child whose biological father (i.e., the child's legally established father and payer of child support orders in Wisconsin between 1997 and 2007)

34 This project has benefited from work by programming staff at the Institute for Research Poverty to match administrative data sets. Given this, when appropriate, I use the word “we.” 35 We selected 10% of the fathers who were not matched to the DOC data because the resulting data pool was very large in size and included nearly 400,000 fathers with legal child support obligations, and because consideration of the full sample required high administrative and programming costs in order to process the subsequent matching to other administrative data. 36 Not all legal payees are the mother of the child, and such cases will be excluded in the sample selection step described below. However, at this point, for convenience, I call the identified female payees “mother,” because this is the case for 99.4% of those in the sample.

586

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normalized weights by dividing “unstandardized weight” by its mean in the analysis. In the following sample selection documentation, I do not distinguish between the two samples, although I take the grouping into consideration when assigning weights to individuals in the analysis.

was incarcerated in a Wisconsin state prison between 1997 and 2007. The matched KIDS information demonstrates that these payees/ mothers are associated with 45,442 fathers (i.e., court-ordered payers, whether or not they are incarcerated) and 84,299 children.

3. Sample construction

Group 2 includes 33,173 payees/mothers of children whose fathers were selected via a 10% random sample of the legally established fathers and court-ordered payers who had not been incarcerated in a Wisconsin state prison between 1997 and 2007. The matched KIDS data demonstrate that these mothers are associated with 37,665 fathers (i.e., court-ordered payers who were, by construction, never incarcerated during the timeframe considered in this study) and 62,477 children.

1) Out of the 72,730 mothers, I37 excluded 162 mothers associated with 202 children who appeared to have more than one legal mother between 1997 and 2007 according to the data in the Wisconsin child support system (KIDS). When the legally established father changed for a child, I used the last legally established father as the child's father. 2) Out of the remaining 72,568 mothers, I excluded 462 mothers who were never a court-ordered payee by using information from the KIDS data about payees in child support orders effective between 1997 and 2008. 3) Out of the remaining 72,106 mothers, I excluded 42 mothers who had any children with missing information in the KIDS data on the child's date of birth; these mothers were associated with 45 children with missing information on the date of birth. 4) Out of the remaining 72,064 mothers, I excluded 54,064 mothers whose first birth (as identified in the KIDS data) occurred before January 1997.38 5) Out of the remaining 18,000 mothers, I excluded 2978 mothers whose first birth (as identified in the KIDS data) occurred after December 2002 in order to have information on the fathers' incarceration statuses for 60 months following the child's birth in the DOC data (DOC data are available through December 2007). 6) Out of the remaining 15,022 mothers, I excluded seven mothers whose selected first-born child died before age five. 7) Out of the remaining 15,015 mothers, I excluded three cases because the father of the selected first-born child died within five years after the child was born. 8) Out of the remaining 15,012 mothers, I excluded 318 cases in which information from the KIDS data about the father of the selected firstborn child was inconclusively matched with the data from DOC. 9) Of the remaining 14,694 mothers, I selected 11,392 mothers who were not married at the time they had their first birth, excluding 3302 mothers.

Building on a sample of 72,730 legal female payees, I implemented further sample selections detailed in the third section (Sample construction). The mothers who were identified above are not necessarily unwed mothers, and the restriction to unwed mothers is implemented in a subsequent sample selection process. Next, we matched data on these mothers to the KIDS system, again to identify the mothers' other male partners (i.e., court-ordered payers) with whom the mother had a child (i.e., children with a known date of birth who were identified in the KIDS system as of the end of 2007). The incarceration statuses of mothers' other partners were readily available because we maintain a full sample of fathers whose records were found in both the DOC and KIDS databases. Because the focus of the current study is on children and their custodial mothers, all male partners associated with the mothers, not just the fathers selected through the initial sampling process, constitute the base father sample of the study. We matched the data on these base mother and father samples with Unemployment Insurance (UI) records for formal earnings and KIDS information to determine details related to demographics and child support (i.e., paternity establishment and child support that was paid and received) between 1997 and 2008. 2. Weighting I assigned weights to individuals as follows: If a mother belongs to Group 1, then “unstandardized weight” = 1. If a mother belongs to Group 2, then “unstandardized weight” = 10/number of (not incarcerated) male partners of the mother through December, 2008. I

These steps resulted in a final sample of 11,392 mother–child pairs.

Appendix B. Paternal Imprisonment Risk for First-Born Nonmarital Children Born in 1998 and 2002 Child's age

Children born in 1998

Children born in 2002

Point-in-time risk of (Post-natal) imprisonment of biological fathers Cumulative risk of (Post-natal) imprisonment of biological fathers Percent of children whose biological fathers were in prison

Point-in-time risk of (Post-natal) imprisonment of biological fathers Cumulative risk of (Post-natal) imprisonment of biological fathers Percent of children whose biological fathers were in prison

Over Over Over Over

12 months 24 months 36 months 60 months

Over 12 months Over 24 months Over 36 months

Birth

1

2

3

6

7

8

9

2.3%

4.1%

5.2%

5.5%

6.2%

4

5 6.2%

6.1%

6.3%

6.5%

6.0%

2.3%

5.5%

8.4%

10.9%

13.1%

14.8%

16.2%

17.7%

18.8%

19.7%

NR NR NR NR 1.8%

1.5% NR NR NR 3.6%

4.1% 1.0% NR NR 4.9%

6.4% 2.8% 0.5% NR 5.0%

8.6% 4.1% 1.7% NR 5.5%

10.5% 5.8% 2.8% 0.2% 5.5%

11.9% 7.3% 4.2% 0.9% NA

13.2% 8.7% 5.3% 1.4% NA

14.5% 9.8% 6.5% 2.3% NA

15.5% 11.0% 7.5% 3.2% NA

1.8 %

5.2%

8.5%

11.1%

13.4%

15.0%

NA

NA

NA

NA

NR NR NR

1.1% NR NR

3.9% 0.5% NR

6.3% 2.0% 0.2%

8.1% 3.8% 1.1%

10.0% 5.5% 2.1%

NA NA NA

NA NA NA

NA NA NA

NA NA NA

Data: Wisconsin Child Support Data (KIDS) and Prison Records from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, A Stratified Random Sample of Unmarried Mother's First Children Born in 1998 (N = 2,079) and in 2002 (N = 1,653). Notes: In measuring fathers' imprisonment, the daily observation window is used at the end of each of the five years following the child's birth. Weights are applied; for details of weights, sampling scheme, and sample construction, see Appendix A. NR = not relevant. NA = not available. 37 Although the project largely benefited from the institutional effort, I use the word “I” here in the sense that I am solely responsible for the sample selection steps described here and the possible errors associated with the process.

38 Out of the 72,064 mothers, 710 mothers had more than one child listed as their first birth. For these mothers, I randomly selected one birth.

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