Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

ICS Travel Awards Background: In the United States, the rates of incarceration has increased at an exponential rate. In 2010, 1.7 million children were reported to have an incarcerated parent. Emerging evidence suggests that parental incarceration is harmful, but that negative mental health sequela might impact girls more than boys. This study will examine whether these results persist while adolescents transition into adulthood. Method: I will use the data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 which is comprised of 8,984 young men and women. Parental incarceration was defined as having either a mother or father incarcerated before the age of 21. Mental health was measured at six time points, beginning in 2000. The statistical analyses will consist propensity scores alongside nearest-neighbor matching, a technique that increases the comparability of respondents with and without an incarcerated parent. Results: A total of 1.51% of the sample reported having an incarcerated parent before the age of 21. After accounting for baseline confounders, there was no impact of parental incarceration on the mental health scale [beta coefficient = 0.88, 95% confidence interval (CI) -1.18, 0.05]. Women reported less mental health problems than males (beta coefficient = -0.81, 95% CI -1.14, 0.48). However, there is some evidence for effect measure modification on the additive scale with women with an incarcerated parent reporting more mental health problems than males without an incarcerated parent (beta coefficient 0.88 95% CI 0.07,1.70). Conclusion This study lends to a growing body of literature about the intergeneration consequences of incarceration. These results suggest that women with an incarcerated parent could benefit from targeted interventions in adolescence in order to mitigate and prevent long lasting mental health problems.