1-117 - Place, Poverty, and Child Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Over the past forty years, historic shifts in populations and economic resources have transformed communities across America. The spatial distribution of poverty has shifted, with increased poverty in suburbs and small towns, and changing populations and economies in rural, suburban, and urban communities. Research has documented growing links between economic disadvantage and child and adolescent development. Yet studies have not delineated whether and why these effects function differently across rural, suburban, and urban communities. This paper symposium presents three studies that characterize associations between poverty and child and adolescent development in communities spanning the urban to rural continuum. The first investigation examines how urbanicity moderates links between income and trajectories of achievement and behavior problems as children move from kindergarten through fifth grade, using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort 1998. The second study draws nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to consider urbanicity-related differences in associations between income and educational achievement and attainment in adolescence as well as labor market outcomes in early adulthood. The third study uses rich data from the Family Life Project to examine economic gaps in early cognitive and social development in the rural U.S. Moreover, it tests parenting as a mediator of income disparities in children’s development. Comparative and process-oriented studies such as these are vital for developing a comprehensive theoretical framework delineating how poverty unfolds across communities and to inform efforts to ameliorate the harmful effects of economic disadvantage.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh

Discussant

• Elizabeth Kneebone, Brookings

Individual Presentations

• Differences in Income Gaps in Achievement and Behavioral Trajectories Across the Urban-Rural Continuum - Presenting Author: Portia Miller, Psychology; Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh

• The Intersection of Poverty and Place: Economic Disparities in Youth Educational Outcomes Across the Urban-Rural Continuum - Presenting Author: Rebekah Levine Levine Coley, Boston College; Alicia Doyle Lynch, Tufts University; Jacqueline Sims, Boston College

• Poverty and Early Child Development in Rural Low-Income Regions: Results from the Family Life Project - Presenting Author: Margaret Burchinal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Cybele Raver, New York University; Lynne Vernon-Feagans, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Martha J Cox, Univ of North Carolina; Clancy Blair, New York University