As the state’s economic climate continues to put pressure on families, a University of Wisconsin researcher found young parents face educational and financial burdens.
A University of Wisconsin researcher recently found almost 50 percent of children raised in the United States are under the care of a single parent of low socioeconomic status, which affects their educational prospects for the future.
UW professor Timothy Smeeding, with support from two Columbia University researchers, investigated the social policies and generational issues young fathers are facing nationwide.
Smeeding’s findings, “Young Disadvantaged Men: Fathers, Family, Poverty, and Policy,” was recently published in a special volume of an American Academy of Political and Social Science journal, according to a statement from UW.
Smeeding said the study aims to highlight the issues faced by these young parents, particularly males.
He described the publication as an attempt to find a way for young people to provide additional support for their families because society often fails to address these emerging trends in parenting.
“We don’t know much on multi-partner fertility and children out of wedlock. We don’t know much about men that go in and out of jail and how it affects their lives,” he said. “How does social policy help or hurt low income men? These all pointed to areas where we could do something.”
He added one concern among researchers in the field is the educational and financial success rates in relation to the age disparities of these fathers, along with what influence these factors may have on their child’s future.
The statement said he found 29 percent of men having children at age 30 and under go on to higher education after high school. For men age 30 and the over at the time of their first child, the figure with post-high school education jumps to 41 percent.
In 2002, 62 percent of fathers without some education above a high school level earned less than $20,000, which the statement said provides evidence these men are at an economic disadvantage.
Smeeding also emphasizes one of the biggest issues for young fathers can be incarceration and the difficulties associated with an individual’s readjustment to normal daily life after their release.
“We need to find a way that people can support their families … In today’s economy these young people have it really rough. Twelve million people [in America] today are either in prison, on parole or have been in prison,” he said. “Employers don’t want someone with a criminal record. We have to do something special to help these guys coming out of prison.”
One such initiative was a national conference recently held at the UW Institute for Research on Poverty, where experts from the around the country met to discuss possible methods to address these pressing issues for young and low-income parents.
The ultimate goal remains to find answers to the economic issues faced by young families and fathers in a quickly shifting financial climate, Smeeding added. He said the economy is changing very rapidly against these individuals.
“People know a little bit about incarceration, a little bit about multi-partner fertility, a little bit about joblessness. We are trying to put together the whole picture,” he said.
