Poster #59 - Is There a Tradeoff Between Behavioral and Physical Well-being? Examining Resilience From a Multidimensional Perspective

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

Developmental science has increasingly focused on identifying children who display positive patterns of behavioral functioning (i.e., behavioral resilience) despite facing economic adversity. Research shows that some low-income children, especially those with strong self-regulation skills, exhibit fewer internalizing behaviors (e.g., depression and anxiety) (Flouri et al., 2014; Lengua et al., 2008). Yet, growing evidence suggests there may be a tradeoff between behavioral and physical well-being, with some behaviorally resilient youth experiencing poorer physical health, including higher body mass index (BMI) (Brody et al., 2013). The physiological and psychological demands of behavior regulation in highly stressful contexts, may, over time, take a toll physically, as indicated by high allostatic load scores. Such findings highlight the importance of investigating low-income children’s resilience across multiple domains, which few studies do. This study, therefore, examines whether behaviorally resilient low-income children are more likely to experience negative health outcomes than their less resilient counterparts.
This study utilizes nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten cohort of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011) (N ≈ 18,000), which tracks children’s development from kindergarten through 5th grade. Roughly 7,800 children whose household income fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty threshold for at least 50% of the study waves comprise the analytic sample. We examined whether there are differences in directly measured BMI at 5th grade between behaviorally resilient and other low-income children. At each wave, teachers reported how often focal children exhibited internalizing behaviors (i.e., anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and loneliness).
Using growth mixture modeling, we first estimated unconditional models (i.e., without covariates) with one to five latent trajectory classes of internalizing problems to identify a group of resilient children. Given that extant research has tended to apply restrictive invariance assumptions without ample justification (Infurna & Jayawickreme, 2019), we compared the fit of each model using three different model specifications. After the final unconditional model was identified, several child and family characteristics were included as control variables to estimate conditional models. Lastly, latent class differences in BMI were examined using the Mplus BCH function.
Results based on fit indices indicated the four-class solution with the (co)variance parameters for growth factors constrained to be equal across classes was optimal (Figure 1). Of the four distinct trajectories identified, we labeled the children characterized by a low, stable pattern of the internalizing problems as “behaviorally resilient”. When the relationships between trajectories of behavior problems and BMI were examined, the results revealed that BMI is significantly lower in the resilient class (Table 1).
In contrast to other recent evidence, we did not detect physical health costs of behavioral resilience for low-income children. However, given the developmental stage of the ECLS-K:2011 represented by the elementary school years, it should be noted that inconsistencies in the results may be due to age differences in the study sample across studies. Nevertheless, attending to the multidimensional nature of resilience, our results could help improve understanding of under what conditions behavioral resilience is or is not a health risk.

Authors

• Ji Hye Park, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Eric Dearing, Boston College

• Daphne A. Henry, University of Pittsburgh