Andersson Matthew A, Garcia Michael A, Glass Jennifer
Baylor University.
University of Texas at Austin.
Soc Forces. 2021 Dec;100(2):794-820. doi: 10.1093/sf/soaa132. Epub 2021 Jan 28.
Socioeconomic inequalities in health and well-being are large, beginning early in childhood and accumulating over the life course, but they also vary widely across rich developed nations. Despite this well-known cross-national variation, research has yet to examine why children's health disparities might be larger or smaller based on national policy contexts and macroeconomic conditions. Parental health and well-being suffer under high work-family or economic strain, which may directly impact children's health inequalities by family social class. These childhood health disadvantages, if not substantially improved, compound to even larger adult inequalities. To examine the role of national work-family reconciliation in children's health, we merge country-level policy data with 2006 and 2010 World Health Organization child-level data on mental and physical well-being and family economic disadvantage. Based on adjusted estimates, we find greatly narrowed disparities in children's self-rated health as work flexibility and vacation-sick leave mandates become more generous. However, cash transfer policies including family benefits spending and childcare costs were not associated with the size of children's health disparities. Taken together, our results suggest the distinctive value of better work-family accommodations, rather than any generic cash allowances, for lessening family-based inequalities in children's health and human capital development.
健康与福祉方面的社会经济不平等现象十分显著，始于童年早期，并在整个生命历程中不断累积，但在富裕的发达国家中，这种不平等现象也存在很大差异。尽管这种跨国差异广为人知，但研究尚未探讨为何基于国家政策背景和宏观经济状况，儿童健康差距可能会更大或更小。在高工作-家庭压力或经济压力下，父母的健康和福祉会受到影响，这可能通过家庭社会阶层直接影响儿童的健康不平等。如果这些童年时期的健康劣势得不到大幅改善，就会加剧，导致更大的成人不平等。为了研究国家工作与家庭协调政策在儿童健康方面的作用，我们将国家层面的政策数据与世界卫生组织2006年和2010年关于儿童身心健康及家庭经济劣势的儿童层面数据进行了合并。基于调整后的估计，我们发现随着工作灵活性以及带薪休假和病假规定变得更加宽松，儿童自评健康方面的差距大幅缩小。然而，包括家庭福利支出和托儿费用在内的现金转移政策与儿童健康差距的大小并无关联。综合来看，我们的研究结果表明，更好地协调工作与家庭关系，而非任何一般性的现金补贴，对于减少基于家庭的儿童健康和人力资本发展方面的不平等具有独特价值。
