After cutting social security in recent decades, the UK, Ireland, and Australia expanded income-support programs during the pandemic. Relatively overlooked, this paper investigates policy responses among younger generations, the socioeconomic disparities therein, and whether and which of these policies, now rolled back, were most beneficial. To answer these questions, I rely on longitudinal survey data on adolescents and their caregivers. In value-added regressions adjusting for pre-pandemic health reports, I find that children reported better average health in households with access to the relatively generous scheme adopted by Australia. Girls reported better health in households targeted by previous cutbacks, including those with lower incomes (UK, Ireland) or headed by a single parent (Australia). The more far-reaching programs in Ireland and Australia were associated with better health also among children in well-off households. On the other hand, some children reported worse mental health despite receipt of payments in all three countries and especially in the UK. Further distributional analyses suggest that programs might have reduced adolescent health disparities in Australia, whereas overall effects were negative or mixed in the UK and Ireland. Hence, policy changes during the pandemic did not equally fit the needs of all children. Nonetheless, drawing lessons from that period, changes to existing income-support programs hold some promise to temper distress and associated inequalities across generations. 

Parenting styles are often the focus of interventions aimed at mitigating disparities in children's well-being. Although research has sought to establish differences in parenting across income groups, the extent to which income itself might be one of the motors of such differences is disputed. Little attention has been paid to income volatility, despite its secular rise, recent salience, and the links between volatility and parenting drawn by theories across the social and developmental sciences.

I thus investigate if and how income volatility affects parenting styles by relying on data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS, 2009-2022) and an empirical approach that addresses measured and unmeasured confounding. Self-reports of parenting styles are differently associated with income instability across income groups. Mothers with higher but more unstable household and labour incomes report lower warmth. When households accumulate benefit income, reports of harsh or more permissive practices become more frequent among mothers with higher incomes and less frequent among those with lower incomes. Fathers with lower incomes report higher warmth in their interactions with their children despite labour income losses, whereas the opposite is found for fathers with higher incomes. Findings shed light on how theories, public debates, and policies could be re-tailored to address the consequences of volatility on family life.