Taryn W Morrissey

Taryn W Morrissey
American University | AU · Department of Public Administration and Policy

Ph.D.

About

57
Publications
21,714
Reads
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1,892
Citations
Additional affiliations
August 2010 - present
American University
Position
  • Professor (Assistant)
Education
May 2005 - August 2008
Cornell University
Field of study
  • Developmental Psychology
August 2003 - May 2005
Cornell University
Field of study
  • Human Development and Family Studies
September 1999 - May 2003
Tufts University
Field of study
  • Psychology and Child Development

Publications

Publications (57)
Article
Preschool has direct effects on attendees, but less is known about how public preschool expansions targeted to low-income children affect early educational experiences and school readiness in a broader community. We use Virginia administrative data (~630,000 students) and a discrete increase in targeted public pre-K (Virginia Preschool Initiative P...
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Latino immigrants living in the United States were highly vulnerable to the health and economic consequences brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. We use the conceptual framing of workplace dignity, worth that is acknowledged based on performance of job responsibilities, to explore Latino immigrants’ experiences during the early months of the pandem...
Article
This study analyzed electronic health record (EHR) data from 2016 through 2019 from a federally qualified health center (FQHC) serving predominantly low-income Latine immigrants in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area to examine how changes in health insurance coverage relate to changes in health care use. Federally qualified health center client...
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Objectives To assess changes in young parents’ health behaviors following implementation of New York State’s Paid Family Leave Program (NYSPFL). Methods We used synthetic control (N = 117,552) and difference-in-differences (N = 18,973) models with data from the nationally representative Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) from 2011...
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Objectives To examine how the time parents spent with their children changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Using nationally representative time-diary data from the American Time Use Survey, parents’ time spent in and location of enriching (direct) and secondary (supervisory) childcare among a sample with at one child under 6 years (N = 2,8...
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This study used a differences-in-differences strategy with national time diary data from 2003 to 2018 to examine the effects of minimum wage changes on parents’ time with children and in child-related activities. Findings indicate that a $1 increase in the minimum wage was associated with a small increase (2.6%) in the likelihood parents with one o...
Article
Purpose The aim of this study is to examine where and with whom adolescents spent time during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to 2019. Methods Time diary data from the May 2019 to December 2020 waves of the American Time Use Survey were used to examine trends in where and with whom a sample of individuals aged 15–18 years (N = 4...
Article
Child care subsidies help low-income families purchase child care, but the field lacks recent and longitudinal studies of patterns of participation. This study uses longitudinal administrative data from the Commonwealth of Virginia to: 1) examine subsidy program participation and duration in 2019 (N = 29,122); and 2) examine participation in public...
Article
During the strong economic conditions that predated the COVID-19 pandemic, many US workers, especially females and individuals of color, suffered from economic vulnerability. Despite growing research attention, we lack an understanding of how the prevalence and patterns of earnings and job instability vary with worker characteristics, particularly...
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This study links county-level early care and education (ECE) program, economic, and demographic data to child-level data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort of 2010–2011 to examine geographic variation in ECE program participation and provision. We find that public ECE programs, particularly Head Start, occupy a larger r...
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This study examined whether the addition of household resources via the receipt of the U.S. Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) affects short-term patterns of parents’ time investments in children, including time spent engaged with children and in activities related to their education. Using difference-in-differences analyses that exploit seasonal vari...
Article
Public health insurance programs like Medicaid provide in-kind resources that may improve health and reduce stress, altering time use patterns. Our study examines the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)-facilitated Medicaid expansions on time spent on home production and childcare. Using time-diary data, we estimated difference-in-differences...
Article
Objective This paper examined whether participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) produced changes to adult and child health and health care utilization during a period of economic recession. Design Instrumental variables analysis relying on variation in state SNAP policies to isolate exogenous variation in household SNAP...
Article
A growing body of research demonstrates the multiple dimensions and dynamism of family income and employment. The metrics of household economic instability and their associations with household characteristics and hardship require further examination in order to compare across studies, subgroups, and historical periods. This paper empirically exami...
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Latinx immigrants have poorer access to health care, compared to non-Latinx Whites. Federally-Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) provide clinical and community programing to address their clients’ health needs. One mechanism by which FQHC’s may strengthen Latinx immigrant well-being is by promoting their individual and community resilience. We partne...
Article
This study examined how neighborhood poverty is associated with children’s trajectories of growth in math and reading skills in early elementary school, and how these associations vary by student characteristics, using multilevel growth models with nationally representative data from the 2011 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort....
Article
Objective: To examine the impact of increased Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit levels as provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) beginning in April 2009 on the health care use and health care needs of participating children. Methods: Difference-in-differences analysis compared changes in health care...
Article
Objectives: Food insecurity is an important public health problem facing children in the United States. Although a number of previous studies suggest that food insecurity has negative impacts on health, these studies have not dealt thoroughly with issues of selection bias. We use propensity scoring techniques to approximate the causal effects of f...
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Neighborhoods provide resources that may affect children’s achievement or moderate the influences of other developmental contexts, such as early care and education (ECE). Using a sample (N ≈ 12,430) from the 2010–2011 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, merged with census tract-level poverty data from the 2008–2012 American Comm...
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Although there is a wealth of research on the relationship between income level and employment status and child well-being, the relationship between economic instability and health during early childhood is understudied. We examine the associations between the incidence, accumulation, and timing of intrayear employment and income instability with h...
Article
Neighborhoods provide resources that may affect children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes. However, it is unclear to what degree associations between neighborhood disadvantage and outcomes persist into elementary school and whether neighborhood disadvantage interacts with household disadvantage. Using data from the 2010–2011 Early Childhood Long...
Article
The presence of firearms and their unsafe storage in the home can increase risk of firearm-related death and injury, but public opinion suggests that firearm ownership is a protective factor against gun violence. This study examined the effects of a recent nearby active shooter incident on gun ownership and storage practices among families with you...
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Early care and education (ECE) enables parental employment and provides a context for child development. Theory suggests that lower child care costs, through subsidized care or the provision of free or low-cost arrangements, would increase the use of ECE and parents’ employment and work hours. This paper reviews the research literature examining th...
Book
Early care and education for many children in the United States is in crisis. The period between birth and kindergarten is a critical time for child development, and socioeconomic disparities that begin early in children's lives contribute to starkly different long-term outcomes for adults. Yet, compared to other advanced economies, high-quality ch...
Article
Support from employers to help parents balance work and family responsibilities has become an increasingly important issue, particularly in the United States, where public support for families is scarce. Little is known about the effectiveness of employer-provided child-care support. Who participates in these programs, and what are their benefits?...
Article
Food insecurity among children and their families negatively affects children's health and well-being. While the link between household resources and food insecurity is well-established, family income alone does not explain food insecurity; neighborhood disadvantage, shown to affect other areas of children's development, may also play a role in foo...
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Objective: This study examined associations between mothers' and fathers' depressive symptoms and their parenting practices relating to gun, fire, and motor vehicle safety. Methods: Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a nationally representative sample of children birth to age five, linear probability mo...
Article
Very low food security among young children is associated with developmental deficiencies. However, little is known about the factors that predict entry into or exit from very low food security during early childhood. This study seeks to: (1) Understand the triggers that explain movements into or out of very low food security among children from bi...
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Background: Maternal postpartum depression affects 10% to 20% of new mothers, but little research has examined its relationship with weight outcomes during infancy and whether clinical interventions can mitigate this relationship. This study investigated the associations of postpartum depressive symptoms with infants’ weight-for-length z-scores, ob...
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Both obesity and food insecurity are important public health problems facing young children in the United States. A lack of affordable, healthy foods is one of the neighborhood factors presumed to underlie both food insecurity and obesity among children. We examine associations between local food prices and children's BMI, weight, and food security...
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Maternal depressive symptoms negatively impact mothers' parenting practices and children's development, but the evidence linking these symptoms to children's obesity is mixed. We use a large sample to examine contemporaneous and lagged associations between maternal depressive symptoms and children's BMI, obesity and food consumption, controlling fo...
Article
This study examined associations between mothers' depressive symptoms and parenting behaviors related to children's nutrition and physical activity. Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, a nationally representative study of children from infancy through kindergarten entry. Contemporaneous and lagged associations between mat...
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Low family income is associated with poor academic achievement among children. Higher rates of school absence and tardiness may be one mechanism through which low family income impacts children's academic success. This study examines relations between family income, as measured by receipt of free or reduced-price lunch, school attendance, and acade...
Conference Paper
Background: Women's nutrition and dietary practices are vital, daily personal behaviors with important implications for their own health and the health and development of their children. We sought to examine the eating behaviors and weight-loss strategies of mothers in the United States, and how these behaviors vary by measures of mothers' psycholo...
Conference Paper
As the primary caregivers, mothers play an important role in children's development, and maternal depression may affect children's health through parenting practices. This study examined the associations between maternal depression and child food consumption and overweight, and the extent to which these associations are moderated by children's heal...
Article
The study examined the relationship between the number of concurrent child care arrangements and children’s incidence of communicable illnesses throughout the first 4½ years of life, and whether this association is mediated by the total number of children across care settings. Within-child fixed effects regression models were used to relate changes...
Article
Research links mothers' employment to higher body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight-for-height, among their children. However, how maternal employment patterns relate to their children's BMI trajectories, and the role that fathers' employment plays in when and at what rate children grow, remain unclear. With data on children from 2 to 15 years...
Article
— The Affordable Care Act (ACA) represents a historic legislative advance in social policy that will dramatically change Americans’ access to health insurance and health-care services. Although nonelderly adults stand to reap the greatest benefits in coverage and access to health care, children will also benefit from improvements in health insuranc...
Article
Although employer-sponsored child care programs have become more common, there is little empirical research on whether these programs affect employees’ satisfaction with child care or their work-life balance, and if effects vary across employee characteristics. In this exploratory study, we administered a survey to employees with children at one la...
Article
Using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network (NICHD SECCYD), the authors examined whether interactions between home and child-care quality affect children's social-emotional adjustment at 24, 36, and 54 months (N = 771). Triadic splits on quality of home and child care were used to e...
Article
Previous work has shown that mothers' employment is associated with increases in children's body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight for height. Nonstandard work (working evenings or nights, weekends, or an irregular shift) may also be associated with children's BMI. This article examines the association between maternal work and children's BMI a...
Article
Child care arrangements change as children age; in general, hours in home-based child care decrease as hours in center-based settings increase. This sequence of child care type may correspond with children's developmental needs; the small peer groups and low child–adult ratios typical of home-based care may allow for more individual child–adult tim...
Article
Child-care vouchers are becoming more common and can provide child-care assistance to a wide spectrum of the population. There is little empirical research, however, on which workers participate in their employer's child-care programs. In this exploratory study, employees with children at 1 large university completed questionnaires to gather inform...
Article
Nationally, 15% of children younger than 5 years regularly attend more than 1 child-care arrangement. An association between arrangement multiplicity and children's behavior problems has been identified, but previous research may be susceptible to measurement or omitted variable bias. This study used within-child fixed effects models to examine ass...
Article
This study examined the use of multiple, concurrent, nonparental child-care arrangements among children under 5 with employed mothers in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N= 759). Older children, those primarily cared for in informal child care, those living in cohabitating or single-parent households, and those whose mothe...
Article
We thank Debra J. Ackerman, Peggy L. Apple, W. Steven Barnett, and Stacie G. Goffin for their thoughtful commentaries on our article “Implementing New York's Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program: An Exploratory Study of Systemic Impacts” (this issue). Our response focuses on two main themes that emerged from the commentaries: (a) the generalizability...
Article
This exploratory study examined the impacts of New York's Universal Pre-kindergarten (UPK) program as perceived by directors at child care centers and preschools not receiving state funds. Although only partially implemented, UPK's mixed-delivery system grants monies to a substantial number of qualifying community-based early care and education cen...
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High-quality early care and education (ECE) programs promote positive child outcomes, allow parents to work, and contribute to the local economy. Although extant research takes into account the ECE sector in its entirety, recent economic and policy interest has centered on part-day prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds only. Using an ecological fr...
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Full-text available
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