Hao, Lingxin
Matsueda, Ross L.
Family Dynamics Through Childhood: A Sibling Model of Behavior Problems
Working Paper No. 7, Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, University of Washington, April 2000.
Also: http://www.csss.washington.edu/Papers/wp7.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, University of Washington
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Childbearing, Adolescent; Children, Poverty; Endogeneity; Heterogeneity; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Life Course; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Parenthood; Parents, Single; Poverty; Pregnancy, Adolescent; Punishment, Corporal; Siblings; Variables, Instrumental; Welfare;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Toronto, Canada, August 1997. This article examines mothers' life course changes and parent-child interactions in models of children's behavior problems. We use an integrated framework that uses social capital theories to conceptualize parents' investments in their children, life course perspectives to conceptualize the timing of mothers' life course transitions, and child development research to specify the effects of parenting practices on children's behavior problems. Our models examine the timing and duration of mothers' poverty, single motherhood, welfare, employment, and kin coresidence through early and middle childhood. They also specify parent-child interactions as a reciprocal outcome of parenting and children's behavior. To estimate the models, we use data on mothers and children from the NLSY. To control for unobserved family heterogeneity and reciprocal causation, we estimate fixed-effects sibling models with lagged endogenous predictors and instrumental variables. These models make strong demands on the data, but provide strong tests of relationships. Using this strategy, we find several robust relationships. Child behavior problems are shaped by poverty and kin coresidence in early and middle childhood, and by parents use of physical punishment.

Scott, Marc A.
Handcock, Mark S.
Covariance Models for Latent Structure in Longitudinal Data
Working Paper No. 14, Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, University of Washington, December 2000.
Also: http://www.csss.washington.edu/Papers/wp14.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79, Young Men
Publisher: Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, University of Washington
Keyword(s): Data Analysis; Heterogeneity; Longitudinal Data Sets; Modeling, Mixed Effects; Modeling, Multilevel; Modeling, Random Effects; Statistical Analysis; Variables, Independent - Covariate; Wage Equations; Wage Gap;

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We present several approaches to modeling latent structure in longitudinal studies when the covariance itself is the primary focus of the analysis. This is a departure from much of the work on longitudinal data analysis, in which attention is focused solely on the cross-sectional mean and the influence of covariates on the mean. Such analyses are particularly important in policy-related studies, in which the heterogeneity of the population is of interest. We describe several traditional approaches to this modeling and introduce a flexible, parsimonious class of covariance models appropriate to such analyses. This class, while rooted in the tradition of mixed effects and random coefficient models, merges several disparate modeling philosophies into what we view as a hybrid approach to longitudinal data modeling. We discuss the implications of this approach and its alternatives especially on model interpretation. We compare several implementations of this class to more commonly employed mixed effects models to describe the strengths and limitations of each. These alternatives are compared in an application to long-term trends in wage inequality for young workers. The findings provide additional guidance for the model formulation process in both statistical and substantive senses.

Full-text available on-line, PDF, http://www.csss.washington.edu/Papers/wp14.pdf