Wei-Jun Jean Yeung

Major Research Interests:
Family and Children, Poverty and Inequality, Demography, Research Methods and Statistics, Work and Family Policy, Urban Sociology.

Current Research Projects:

China's Eocnomic Transition and Children's Well-being
This project examines the relationship between industrialization and children's well beings measured by education and child mortality in China. Our analysis is based on micro census data collected in 1982, 1990, and 2000 and various industrial surveys. These data allow us to control for year and county fixed effects.

Intergenerational Stratification on Children's Achievement
This research investigates factors contributing to the substantial achievement gaps in high school children. I focus on four important clusters of factors: (1) intergenerational resources, 2) family interactions, 3) racial inequalities in students?? school and neighborhoods, and 4) how racial inequalities in various contexts interact with one another to affect children??s cognitive abilities. The analysis is based on longitudinal data on family histories from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplements conducted in 1997 and 2003 as well as on geographic information from census data and school district data over the last three decades.

Childhood Consumption and Children's Education and Emotional Well-being
This project examines childhood consumption as a potential mechanism of intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantages. We focus on the factors that influence parents?? decisions in allocating resources and making investment in children??s human capital, and how these investments affect children's development. The unique opportunity of CDS-II of PSID enables a first attempt to examine these theoretically important but empirically understudied relationships.

Paternal Involvement and Child Well-being
This research is supported by funding from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development to support work in American fathers' involvement with children. The goals of this project are (1) to describe how paternal involvement with children, in the form of time, financial and psychological resources, differ by family structure, (2) to test hypotheses about factors that affect paternal involvement behavior, and (3) to investigate how children's psychological and cognitive well-being relates to fathers' attitudes and involvement behavior. The research will be based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), which contains annual data collected since 1968 for a nationally representative sample of American households. Using longitudinal history in the PSID and data from the 1997 Child Development Supplement, this project will assess the extent to which social and economic involvement with children varies with fathers' changing life circumstances.

Caring for Elderly Parents
The National Institute of Aging has funded collaboration between Wei-Jun Jean Yeung and Martha Hill in University of Michigan to examine responses of baby-boom children to the health care needs of their elderly parents and how these responses compare to those of earlier cohorts. Intergenerational transfers to ailing parents are central to this investigation, and a primary interest is in gauging the extent to which changes in children's labor market participation are engendered by providing those transfers. Using a national sample of baby-boomers, both leading edge (born 1945-54) and trailing edge (born 1955-64), and prior cohorts with elderly parents, the analysis aims at examining differences across these groups in terms of: level and type of transfers, actual changes in work hours (short-run and long run), extent to which transfers engendered changes in work hours, and how individual histories of social, economic and demographic circumstances and behaviors relate to these outcomes.

Long-term Trends in U.S. Poverty and Welfare Dependence
With funding received from the National Science Foundation, I examine the long-term trends of poverty and welfare receipts in U.S. I will document the duration and patterns of poverty and welfare receipt for multiple cohorts of individuals in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, by different individual and family characteristics such as ethnicity, marital status, and age of the household head. The project will also examine intergenerational correlation between childhood poverty and young adult achievement such as educational attainment and welfare status. Parts of the results from this project will be used to support the production of the annual report on the indicators of poverty and welfare dependence by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE).

Wealth and Health: Race, Assets and Child Development
Dalton Conley and I received a research grant from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development to examine the link between parental wealth and young children's physical and mental well-being. We intend to investigate how family net worth may mediate or modify the race - child outcome association. The mechanism through which family wealth influences children's health and achievements will be a focus of this study. We will make advantage of data collected in a series of supplemental files to Panel Study of Income Dynamics, including the 1997 Child Development Supplement and family wealth data collected in the years 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2001.

Selected Publications:

Yeung, W. J. and R. Glauber. Forthcoming. "Time Use for Children in Low-income Families". In R. Crane and E. Marshall (Eds.) Handbook of Families and Poverty: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Sage Publication.

Conley, D. and W. J. Yeung. 2005. "Black-White Differences in Occupational Prestige: Their Impact on Child Development", American Behavioral Scientist 48(9): 1229-1249.

Stafford, F. and Yeung, W.J. 2005. "The Distribution of Children's Developmental Resources", in Daniel Hamermesh (Ed.) Economics of Time Use. Pp. 289-313. Elsevier.

Yeung, W. J. 2004. "Fathers: An Overlooked Resource for Children's Educational Success", in Conley, D. & Albright, K. (Eds.) After the Bell: Family Background, Public Policy, and Educational Success. pp.145-169. Routledge Press: London and New York.

Duncan, G.J., Dunifon, R., Doran, M & Yeung, W. J. 2001. "How Different are Welfare Families from Low-income Working Families?",. In Duncan and L. Chase-Lansdale (Eds.) For Better and For Worse: Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children and Families, pp.103-131. Russell Sage Publication.

Hill, M. S., Yeung, W.J. & Duncan, G. J. 2003. "Childhood Family Structure and Young Adult Behaviors" in Michael Vogler and Klaus F. Zimmermann (Eds.), Family, Household and Work, Springer-Verlag, Reprinted from Journal of Population Economics 2001, v. 14: 271-299.

Yeung, W.J., Linver, M, & Brooks-Gunn, J. 2002. "How Money Matters for Young Children's Development: Parental Investment and Family Processes" Child Development 73(6): 1861-1879.

Newman, S., Harkness, J. & Yeung, W.J, 2003. "Neighborhood Poverty, Assisted Housing, and the Educational Attainment of Children", In Goering, J.M. and Feins, J.D. (Eds.), Choosing a Better Life: Evaluating the Moving to Opportunity Social Experiment. Russell Sage Publication.

Teachman, J., Duncan, G., Yeung, W. J. & Levy, D. 2001. "Covariance Structure Models for Fixed and Random Effects", Sociological Methods and Research, 30(2): 271-288.

Hill, M. S., Yeung, W.J. & Duncan, G. J. 2001. "Childhood Family Structure and Young Adult Behaviors", Journal of Population Economics 14: 271-299.

Yeung, W.J., Sandberg, J., Davis-Kean P.,& Hofferth, S. 2001. "Children's Time-use with Fathers in Intact Families", Journal of Marriage and the Family, 63(1): 136-154.

Hill, M. S. and Yeung, W. J. 2002. "Behavior and Status of Children, Adolescents and Young Adults". In Generation and Gender: Exploring Future Research and Data Collection Options, pp.1-58, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

Yeung, W. J., Duncan, G.J.& Hill, M.S. 2000. "Putting Fathers Back in The Picture: Parental Activities and Children's Attainment", Journal of Marriage and Family Review, 29, nos. 2/3 & 4: 97-114. Also reprinted in Fatherhood: Research, Interventions and Policies, edited by H.E. Peters, G.W. Peterson, S. Steinmetz, and R.D. Day, Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.

Hill, M.S. and Yeung, W. J. 2000. "How Have Alterations in the Structure of Opportunities Affected Transitions to Adulthood?" (with Hill, M. S.) In Transition to Adulthood in a Changing Economy: No Work, No Family, No Future? Pp.1-39. Alan Booth, Ann C. Crouter and Michael Shanahan (Eds.). Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.

Yeung, W. J. & Hofferth, S. 1998. "Family Adaptations to Income and Job Loss in the U.S.", Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Vol. 19(3): 255-283.

Duncan, G. J.; Yeung, W.J., Brooks-Gunn, J. & Smith, J. 1998. "How Does Childhood Poverty Affect the Life Chances of Children?", American Sociological Review, Vol. 63 (3): 406-423.

Smith, P. & Yeung, W.J., 1998. "Childhood Welfare Receipt and the Implications of Welfare Reform", Social Service Review, Vol. 72 (1): 1-17. Also reprinted in Kirk, S. A. (Ed.) Social Work Research Methods. University of Chicago Press.

Papers Under Review:

"Days of the Week The Nature and Determinants of Parental Childcare Time", Yeung, W.J. and F. Stafford.

"Altering Work Patterns to Accommodate Help to Elderly Parents: Are U.S. Baby-Boomers Juggling Work and Family in New Patterns?", Hill, Martha S. and W.J. Yeung.

"How Multiple Domains of Fathering Affect Children's Educational Success", Yeung, W. J.

Courses:

Research Methods V93.0301003, V93.0301004

Sociology of the FamilyV93.0451.001

Social Problems: Poverty

China's Population and Economic Transition

Family and School Influence on Children's Education>

Fatherhood

Professional Affiliations:

Alpha Kappa Delta International Honor Society
American Sociological Association
Population Association of America
Society for Research in Child Development
Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management
National Council on Family Relations

Press Releases About My Work:

NYU Today Research News - Wealth and Racial Achievement Gap, April 2008

Family wealth may explain differences in test scores in school-age children, March 2008

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080325083329.htm

http://www.newamerica.net/blog/early-ed-watch/2008/featured-abstract-does-wealth-affect-achievement-gap-3103

http://www.dailyindia.com/show/228079.php/Family-wealth-plays-crucial-role-in-childs-cognitive-achievement

http://www.physorg.com/news125652932.html

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/sfri-fwm031908.php

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/101597.php

How Family Income Affects Pre-schoolers? Cognitive Abilities And Behaviorhttp://www.nyu.edu/publicaffairs/newsreleases/b_STUDY.shtml

http://www.hbns.org/news/income11-12-02.cfm

http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/Releases/1999/Jun99/r061099a.html

http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/Releases/1999/Jun99/r061099b.html

USA Today
Fathers focus increased care on boys Many moms still go it alone; most bear burden on weekdays

USA Today
Today's daddies make more room for child care

USA Today
How Much Time Do Kids Spend with Dad?(Brief Article) (August, 2000)

The Washington Post
June 22, 1999, How & WHY; Dads Find Time for Fun and Chores, Catherine O'Neill Grace, Special to The Washington Post

Rueters News