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Growing Up in Poverty: Leveraging Statewide Linked Administrative Data to Examine Long-Term College and Workforce Outcomes

Fri, October 5, 4:45 to 6:15pm, Doubletree Hilton, Room: Fiesta II and III

Abstract

Growing up in poverty has been linked to a number of negative developmental outcomes, and children who are exposed to persistent poverty have more detrimental outcomes than children exposed to transitory poverty (McLoyd, 1998). Studies on the developmental effects of poverty typically rely on survey measures, which may suffer from small sample sizes, nonresponse bias, and attrition (Michelmore & Dynarksi, 2017). Leveraging statewide administrative data can help to fill these gaps, but these datasets typically contain a single crude indicator of poverty—eligibility for free and reduced price meals—which presents a number of unique measurement challenges. This study used administrative data from Maryland to examine the relationship between growing up in poverty and long-term college and workforce outcomes for the population of Maryland public school students.
Data were from the Maryland Longitudinal Data System (MLDS), Maryland’s statewide repository for individual-level education and workforce data that are longitudinally linked across three state agencies. The cohort of Maryland public school students who were in 6th grade (N = 63,427) in 2007-08 (the earliest year of data available in the MLDS) was used for this study. The cohort is predominantly white (50%; 36% Black; 5% Asian; 9% other), non-Hispanic (89%), and not eligible for free and reduced price meals (FARMs; 64%) in sixth grade. Forty-nine percent of students in the cohort were Female. Ninety-one percent of the original students in the cohort were also identified in the 9-12th grade, indicating good retention in the population over time. Students are nested within 466 public schools in 6th grade in 2007-08 and 257 public schools in 12th grade in 2013-14.
Students’ history of poverty was examined between 6th-12th grade, strengthening the measurement of poverty for this study. Forty-six percent (N = 29,189) of students were never eligible for FARMs throughout middle and high school, and 18% (N = 11,313) of students were eligible for FARMs every year throughout middle and high school. Students who were never eligible for FARMs were more likely to graduate high school on time (91% versus 71%), attend college (81% versus 47%), and earned higher wages in the workforce ($33,000 versus $25,000) when compared to students who were always eligible for FARMs.
The strengths and limitations of using administrative data to examine the long-term outcomes associated with poverty, as well as implications for research, policy, and practice, will be discussed.

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