Poster #40 - The Effects of Poverty on Children's Developmental Outcomes: Absolute Versus Relative Poverty

• In Event: 75.043 - MTCC Poster Session 17
  In Poster Session: 75.043-7 - Human Development 1

Abstract

Using the NLSY data, this study examined the effects of poverty, absolute and relative, on children's math and reading scores from ages 5 to 12. 1) Are there any associations between poverty and math/reading scores measured by absolute and relative poverty? 2) Are the adverse poverty effects get larger as children get older? There was significant overall adverse impact of absolute poverty on children while no significant impact of relative poverty on math and reading scores. (ii) When children became older, the gap between the poor and the rich, defined absolutely, became bigger when children were older although children from rich family have much higher scores at the beginning (at ages 5-6), the gap between them, defined relatively, became undistinguishable.

Authors

• Lyons Zhang, University of Texas

• Kyunghee Lee, Michigan State University