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America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2007

Secure Parental Employment

Secure parental employment reduces the incidence of poverty and its attendant risks to children. Since most parents who obtain health insurance for themselves and their children do so through their employers, a secure job can also be a key variable in determining whether children have access to health care. Secure parental employment may also enhance children's psychological well-being and improve family functioning by reducing stress and other negative effects that unemployment and underemployment can have on parents.^{40, 41} One measure of secure parental employment is the percentage of children whose resident parent or parents were employed full time during a given year.

Indicator ECON2: Percentage of children ages 0–17 living with at least one parent employed year round, full time by family structure, 1980–2005

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau. Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement.

The percentage of children who had at least one parent working year round, full time was 78.3 percent in 2005, up from 77.6 percent in 2004, but below its peak of 80 percent in 2000. This proportion has remained relatively high, given its historical context; in the early 1990s, the proportion was 72 percent.
In 2005, 89 percent of children living in families maintained by two parents had at least one parent who worked year round, full time. In contrast, 71 percent of children living in families maintained by a single father and 48 percent of children living in families maintained by a single mother had a parent who worked year round, full time.
Children living in poverty were much less likely to have a parent working year round, full time than children living at or above the poverty line (32 percent and 88 percent, respectively, in 2005). In 2005, 57 percent of children living in families maintained by two parents who were living below the poverty line had at least one parent working year round, full time, compared with 92 percent of children living at or above the poverty line.
Black, non-Hispanic children and Hispanic children were less likely than White, non-Hispanic children to have a parent working year round, full time. About 74 percent of Hispanic children and 62 percent of Black, non-Hispanic children lived in families with secure parental employment in 2005, compared with 84 percent of White, non-Hispanic children.
In 2005, 31 percent of children in married two- parent families had both parents working year round, full time, up from 17 percent in 1980, but down slightly from the peak of 33 percent in 2000.

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⁴⁰ Mayer, S.E. (1997). Income, employment and the support of children. In Hauser, R.M., Brown, B.V., and Prosser, W. (Eds.), Indicators of children's well-being. New York, NY: Russell Sage Press.

⁴¹ Smith, J.R., Brooks-Gunn, J., and Jackson, A.P. (1997). Parental employment and children. In Hauser, R.M., Brown, B.V., and Prosser, W. (Eds.), Indicators of children's well-being. New York, NY: Russell Sage Press.