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Poster #83 - Parents’ financial literacy and preschoolers’ emerging numeracy skills

Sat, March 23, 2:30 to 3:45pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Children’s exposure to early numeracy experiences in the home has traditionally received less attention compared with early literacy experiences. However, early numeracy exchanges are observed in 3-5 year old children’s everyday interactions, and are associated with maths ability (Blvevins-Knake & Musun-Miller, 1996). There is significant variation in home-based numeracy interactions across children (Anders et al., 2011; Tudge & Douchet, 2004) and across socio-economic groups (Vandermaas-Peeler et al., 2009). We propose parents’ financial literacy as a potential mechanism through which socio-economic position might relate to the interactions parents have with their children around early numeracy, and children’s numeracy knowledge. Participants were 5,839 children who were part of Growing Up in New Zealand – a longitudinal pre-birth population cohort. Antenatal area deprivation and maternal education were used as indicators of socio-economic status. When children were aged 4 ½ years, mothers self-reported on a range of both positive (e.g., a savings account) and negative (e.g., credit card debt) financial literacy indicators, as well as reporting the frequency of home-based numeracy interactions with their child (encouraging counting and recognising numbers). Children at age 4 ½ also engaged in a numeracy task with a researcher where they were asked to count up (1-10) and down (10-1): resulting in total score of 0-20. Analyses were conducted in SAS 9.4 and serial mediation models were tested using Hayes (2012) Process macro. Serial mediation models tested indirect associations of socio-economic status relating to children’s numeracy through maternal financial literacy and then mother-child frequency of numeracy interactions (see attached overview figure). Preliminary analyses identified that only positive financial literacy items were significantly related to other variables in the model, so only this index of items was included. Four indirect serial mediation models were tested: two with maternal education as the antecedent variable (with one model using maternal encouragement of number recognition as the second mediator, and the other using maternal encouragement of counting); and two with area deprivation as the antecedent variable (again with one model using maternal encouragement of number recognition as the second mediator, and the other using maternal encouragement of counting). Covariates in each model were maternal ethnicity, rurality, child parity and child gender. All four models supported a serial mediation effect of either maternal education or area deprivation on child numeracy through positive financial literacy and maternal encouragement of either number recognition or counting, with the 95% bootstrapping confidence intervals not crossing zero. Findings suggest that in addition to promoting home-based parent-child numeracy interactions, population approaches that target improved financial literacy among adults of parenting age may also be indicated. Replication with observational measures of parent-child numeracy interactions, as well as additional child numeracy outcomes would be useful.

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