Changing Circumstances, Changing Outcomes?

Abstract

Emerging research in developmental psychology and neuroscience suggests that childhood poverty is associated with high levels of exposure to multiple contextual risks, which cumulatively lead to persistent elevated stress levels that have a direct, as well an indirect (e.g., through parental processes), impact on child cognitive, academic, and socioemotional functioning (Evans & Kim, 2013). Such research has begun to change the way that scholars and practitioners envision the context of poverty, the persistence of the income-achievement gap, and the types of interventions that may be most effective in addressing disparities in children’s long-term educational success. However, research on the relations between poverty-associated stress and child outcomes is still in its infancy and many questions remain. In particular, it is unclear whether changing family economic circumstances matter, a question of concern for developmental science and public policy. Moreover, there is little work on moderators of relations between income, stress, and child outcomes, which could help identify factors that buffer children from the harm of stressful home environments. With longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics’ Child Development Supplement, the present study used fixed effects models to examine within-child associations between changes in family income, cumulative risk exposure (as measured by an index that includes a range of poverty-related stressors, such as economic strain, neighborhood crime, and physical and psychological home environments), and children’s cognitive, academic and socioemotional functioning. In addition, moderators of these associations were investigated in order to identify potential protective mechanisms and crucial levers for interventions and policy development. On the whole, findings were consistent with the cumulative stress model. On average, the estimated direct effects of changes in family income (i.e., prior to examining mediation or moderators) were not significant for changes in child outcomes. Yet, changes in income were, for the sample as a whole, indirectly related via changes in cumulative risk exposure: increases in income predicted decreases in cumulative risk exposure which, in turn, predicted improvements in achievement and declines in externalizing behavior. Additionally, these relations were moderated by child age, initial level of family income, and initial level of cumulative risk.