2011 The Palm Beach County Family Study (Full Report)

2 to year 5, when 21 percent scored above the normal range on the CES-D, and significantly lowerrelative to the first year. The percentage of mothers with elevated parental stress scores—17 percent inyear 5—was also stable from years 2 through 5 (but not measured in year 1). Finally, about four-fifths ofmothers described their general health as “good” to “excellent” in all 5 years.The results for children’s health and development are generally positive. Most mothers reported theirfocal child to be in “good” to “excellent” physical health, although 19 percent of the mothers reported thattheir focal child has “special needs”—most often asthma and other respiratory problems. In terms ofdevelopment, a majority of the children demonstrate a range of early literacy, social-emotional skills, andcommunicative behaviors typical for their ages. For example, more than two-thirds of the children werereported to be talking in sentences, and 90 percent or more demonstrating appropriate listening andspeaking skills when conversing with other people. However, foreign-born mothers were more likely thanU.S.-born mothers to report their focal child has some social-emotional problem behaviors (such as theinability to sit still), which may be attributed, in part, to cultural differences in their expectations for thebehavior of preschool children. In addition, foreign-born mothers were less likely than U.S.-born mothersto report that their child demonstrates certain preliteracy behaviors. Such differences might be the resultof differences in opportunities to develop and use these skills.Another important health indicator is access to healthcare. A majority (77%) of the mothers reportedreceiving regular medical care for themselves at year 5. However, this still indicates that, as in theprevious year, almost a quarter of the sample mothers were going without routine healthcare, makingthem less likely to receive services to maintain interconceptional health. With regard to care duringpregnancy, mothers’ use of prenatal care for children born after their focal child followed the samepattern observed with their focal child; that is, about three-quarters said they had initiated care in the firsttrimester, while 16 percent reported doing so in the second trimester.Although three-fourths (76%) of the focal children were covered by health insurance in year 5, it is aconcern that 24 percent of the focal children (and 13 percent of all children in the study families) were notcovered. An additional concern is that only 45 percent of the sample mothers reported having healthinsurance for themselves, a percentage that was fairly stable from years 2 through 5 and much lower thanthe percentage in year 1 when mothers were likely to have Medicaid coverage around the birth of theirfocal child. There also were marked differences between foreign-born and U.S.-born mothers with respectto health insurance coverage; 75 percent of U.S.-born mothers had health insurance, compared to only 19percent of foreign-born mothers. In addition, the focal children of foreign-born mothers were less likelythan the children of U.S.-born children to have health insurance, although the difference was muchsmaller (81% vs. 90%).Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago 134