1-169 - Housing and Neighborhoods for Children and Adolescents: Mechanisms and Moderators

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The broader ecological contexts of children and adolescents have consequences for development. This set of papers examines two of those contexts with regards to child development: housing and neighborhoods. Recent reviews of the housing and neighborhood literatures underscore the importance of the housing and neighborhood context for children (e.g., Leventhal, Dupéré, & Shuey, in press; Leventhal & Newman, 2010). Housing conditions such as household size, quality, and instability have demonstrated links with child and adolescent outcomes. Moreover, neighborhood characteristics including perceived danger are challenging contexts for children. The first paper in the symposium examines how housing quality and size are associated with adolescent risk behaviors among a group of diverse low-income youth. Results suggest that household size and quality are associated with adolescent risk behaviors but are moderated by parental monitoring. The second paper, using the same sample, explores residential instability and housing quality, as moderated by developmental delays, with the early childhood cohort. Findings indicate that young children with developmental delays who faced concurrent low-quality housing conditions and residential instability (vs. those without) also demonstrated lower reading achievement. The third paper considers neighborhood process characteristics and child health and access to healthcare among a low-income, urban sample, and suggests that neighborhood danger is associated with access to healthcare and youth health. Finally, adolescent antisocial behavior, self-control, and social supports are examined with a sample of urban youth. Adolescent self-control, although to a lesser extent than social supports, are associated with antisocial behavior, but in neighborhoods with more danger and disadvantage.

Sub Unit

• Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Chair

• Sara Anderson, Georgetown University

Individual Presentations

• Housing and adolescent development during the transition to adulthood - Presenting Author: Margaret Caldwell Elliott, Tufts University; Elizabeth A Shuey, Tufts University; Tama Leventhal, Tufts University

• Inadequate housing and early reading problems: Tests of a bioecological development model - Presenting Author: Patrick J Fowler, Washington University in St. Louis; Sara Anderson, Georgetown University; Elizabeth A Shuey, Tufts University; Lauren McGrath, American University

• Neighborhood social processes, access to health care, and child health - Presenting Author: Amanda Roy, University of Illinois-Chicago

• Ecology matters: Neighborhood differences the role of self-control and social support for adolescent behavior - Presenting Author: Sara Anderson, Georgetown University; Alice Donlan, Tufts University; Elana McDermott, Tufts University