IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apeclt/v19y2012i18p1879-1883.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Analysis of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and the impact of family structure on children's well-being in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Shishu Zhang
  • Gregory J. Soukup

Abstract

Different family structures can significantly impact the well-being of children. From 1980 to 2008, reported births to unwed mothers in the United States rose from 18.4% to 40.6% and children in single-parent households in the United States increased from 19.5% to 29.5%. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) (2001--2005) collected data on 13 582 American children 5--19 years old. A multiple-regression analysis tested for differences regarding family structure and income and the MEPS results on physical health, mental health, Body Mass Index (BMI) and class attendance. Level of significance for the study was p > 0.05. Children from single-mother households had significantly higher absentee rates than children from single-father households. Children from single-father families had significantly better rates of well-being when compared to single-mother families in general by income level. Children from higher income households had significantly better rates of mental and physical health and lower BMI and absentee rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Shishu Zhang & Gregory J. Soukup, 2012. "Analysis of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and the impact of family structure on children's well-being in the United States," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(18), pages 1879-1883, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:19:y:2012:i:18:p:1879-1883
    DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2012.669458
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2012.669458
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13504851.2012.669458?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gomis-Porqueras, Pedro & Moslehi, Solmaz & Suen, Richard M.H., 2016. "The role of dietary choices and medical expenditures on health outcomes when health shocks are endogenous," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 13-25.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:19:y:2012:i:18:p:1879-1883. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEL20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.