2011 The Palm Beach County Family Study (Full Report)

friend/neighbor/other), which were measured in year 5. 67 We also used mothers’ reports on children’sspecial needs at year 2 because not all were likely to have been identified at baseline.Table 60 through Table 65 present the results of the logistic regression analyses. Similar to the results ofprevious analyses, we found little evidence of a relationship between mothers’ service use and childoutcomes. The evidence we did find suggests that greater service use is associated with a lower likelihoodof the focal child speaking in long sentences (see Table 60) and that having ever received parenting helpis associated with a lower likelihood of the focal child being in the top 25 th percentile for communicationskills (see Table 61). As explained previously, these results are likely a reflection of the fact that motherswith greater needs were more likely to receive services and to use more services on average than motherswith fewer needs. Furthermore, as explained previously, we cannot fully control for the differencesbetween mothers who did and did not receive services. Thus, it is not surprising to find that greaterservice use is associated with worse outcomes.We also found that, for four of the six child outcomes examined, the children of U.S.-born black mothershad significantly better outcomes (based on mother’s self-report) than the children of foreign-bornHispanic mothers. Specifically, the children of U.S.-born black mothers were significantly more likely tobe speaking in long sentences and had significantly greater odds of falling into the top 25 th percentile forschool readiness, social-emotional, and communication skills. The differences were especially large forsocial-emotional and school readiness skills, for which the odds of the children of U.S.-born blackmothers being in the top 25 th percentile were 12 and 7 to 8 times those of the children of foreign-bornHispanic mothers, respectively. These results are similar to those obtained in year 4, when we found thatthe children of U.S.-born black mothers were significantly more likely to be speaking in either short orlong sentences and had significantly greater odds of falling into the top 25 th percentile for all otheroutcomes.Also similar to year 4, we found that the children of foreign-born black mothers had significantly betteroutcomes (based on mother’s self-report) in four of the six developmental areas, when compared to thechildren of foreign-born Hispanic mothers. Finally, we did not find much evidence of differences inoutcomes between the children of U.S.- and foreign-born Hispanic mothers; this result is also similar tothat obtained in year 4. The one area where the children of U.S.-born Hispanic mothers appear to have67 Because only 8 percent of family childcare centers participated in the QIS program (seeTable 41), we did not create a separate variable for these centers; rather, we looked at the combined effect of QIS and non-QISfamily childcare on child outcomes.Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago 113