The idea that locking up parents can have baleful effects on their children’s health isn’t exactly new. I have written before about research that found links between the incarceration of parents and learning disabilities, developmental delays and behavior problems, even after other variables were taken into account.

But a new paper published Thursday in the British journal The Lancet makes clear just how unequal the effects of incarceration can be on families in the United States, which incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country.

“The emerging literature on the family and community effects of mass incarceration points to negative health impacts on the female partners and children of incarcerated men, and raises concerns that excessive incarceration could harm entire communities and thus might partly underlie health disparities both in the U.S.A. and between the U.S.A. and other developed countries,” write Christopher Wildeman, a sociologist at Cornell University, and Emily Wang, a professor of medicine at Yale. 

[For more of this story, written by Ryan White, go to https://www.centerforhealthjou...th-minority-children]