The Impact of Family Poverty Dynamics on Children’s Socioemotional Development during Elementary School

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

Prior research has consistently found poor children are more likely to have difficulties expressing and managing emotions and establishing and maintaining healthy peer relationships (Arora et al., 2020). Further, longitudinal evidence suggests children who leave elementary school with fewer socioemotional skills and greater behavioral problems are more likely to experience academic and social difficulties later on leading to lower academic achievement, higher risk of dropping out, and lower likelihood of college enrollment and attainment (Gándara & Contreras, 2009; Orfield & Lee, 2006). This study adds to the growing body of literature on poverty by examining how family poverty affect children’s socioemotional development during the early years of formal schooling. Rather than viewing poverty as static, this study will utilize national, longitudinal survey data to investigate how the depth, duration, and chronic verses cyclical nature of family poverty influences the social and behavioral functioning of children over time from kindergarten through fifth grade.

We hypothesize a) children will vary in in their poverty status as well as the depth, timing and duration of poverty and b) children who experience chronic poverty, particularly deep poverty, will have worse developmental trajectories compared to similar children who experienced sporadic poverty or did not experience poverty at all, and c) the impact of poverty on children’s behavioral development will increase linearly over time. This study will utilize data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 (ECLS-K: 2011). The ECLS-K is a nationally representative sample of approximately 18,000 kindergartners in 2010 who were surveyed annually along with their parents, teachers, and school administrators through fifth grade. Our analytic sample consists of 7,485 kindergarten students who participated in the survey annually through fifth grade. Missing data will be dealt using multiple imputation available in STATA.

Our time-varying outcome, socioemotional development, will be measured using teacher reports of how often the child exhibited certain behaviors or experienced problems in each grade based on the Social Skills Rating System (Gresham & Elliot, 1990) including approaches to learning, internalizing behavior, externalizing behavior and social skills. To measure depth of poverty, we used a categorical variable in the annual parent survey which indicates whether the family is above 200% of the federal poverty threshold (non-poor), above 100% but at or below 200% (near-poor), above 50% but at or below 100% (poor), and at or below 50% of the federal poverty line (extremely poor). We measured the dynamic nature of poverty by combining information on poverty status and depth of poverty annually as the student progressed from kindergarten through fifth grade to count the number of years the student experienced poverty and how often the child cycled in and out of poverty during the first six years of school. We have begun extracting and coding all variables for this study including child and family level controls. We will estimate multilevel growth curve models to predict developmental trajectories with time (level 1) nested within individual children (level 2) using xtmixed command in STATA by the end of the Fall semester.

Authors

• Martha Jailene Aguirre, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Christy L Lleras, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author