1-010 - Environmental Stress, Economic Disadvantage, and their links to Child and Family Functioning

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Studies show that exposure to stress early in life can have negative consequences for children’s cognitive and behavioral development. Yet stressful life experiences are not equally distributed among all children. Compared to more advantaged peers, low-income children tend to experience a disproportionate share of environmental stress both inside the home (e.g. inadequate nutrition, substandard housing conditions, interparental violence, parental depression) and within their communities (e.g. air, industrial, and noise pollution, dangerous and dilapidated neighborhoods, overcrowding and lack of green spaces). These types of environmental stressors potentiate emotional and physiological stress responses and may ultimately harm children’s long-term development. Accordingly, increased exposure to environmental stress may help explain negative links between socioeconomic disadvantage and children’s development. This symposium examines sources of environmental stress in disadvantaged homes and its impacts on children and families. The first study examines five different types of poverty-related adversity as predictors of self-reported depressive symptoms among a group of low-income, Latina mothers enrolled in a parenting intervention study delivered through Early Head Start. The second investigation uses nationally representative data from the ECLS-K: 1998 to examine whether differential exposure to pollutants is a pathway through which economic disadvantage harms academic and behavioral development. The final paper examines the impacts of early life stress, including the potential contributions of hypo-cortisol, on later depressive symptoms in a sample of high risk preschoolers. Together, these papers provide important information regarding types of environmental stressors that and how these stressors contribute to economic disparities in child functioning.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Portia Miller, Psychology

Discussant

• Emma Kristine Adam, Northwestern Univ

Individual Presentations

• Poverty-Related Toxic Stress and Maternal Mental Health: Measurement and Models - Presenting Author: Cybele Raver, New York University; Clancy Blair, New York University

• Air Pollution, Toxic Releases, and Socioeconomic Disparities in Child Development - Presenting Author: Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh; Portia Miller, Psychology

• Early Life Stress Profiles in High-risk Preschoolers: Predicting the Cortisol Awakening Response & Child Depression Longitudinally - Presenting Author: Lisa S. Badanes, Metropolitan State University of Denver; Julia Dmitrieva, University of Denver; Marina M Mendoza, University of Denver; Lisa Schlueter McFadyen-Ketchum, University of Denver; Sarah E Watamura, University of Denver