2-062 - Economic Disadvantage in Context: Variation in Family and Community Processes

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Childhood poverty is widespread throughout the industrialized and developing world, which is troubling because childhood economic disadvantage is linked to worse educational, health, socioemotional, and behavioral outcomes. The lived experience of economic disadvantage, however, varies across families and communities. It is important examine the contextualization of poverty and its implications for children and families to understand how economic disadvantage threatens child development and, accordingly, how to narrow income gaps in children’s wellbeing. Utilizing data from three different countries, this symposium attends to contextual differences in the lives of children and families among poor families and across the income distribution. Within a sample of economically disadvantaged families in the Philippines, Paper 1 identifies specific family and neighborhood contextual risk factors that increase parental distress and decrease warm parenting. Paper 2 replicates and extends those findings in nationally representative cohort of American kindergarteners by showing how various community-level resources and stressors explain income gaps in children’s achievement both directly and via family functioning. Using longitudinal data from a Head Start sample, Paper 3 identifies profiles of family risk (poverty, single parenthood, overcrowding) over time and their relations to behavioral outcomes in fifth grade. The final paper uses quasi-experimental methods to estimate the effects of neighborhood violence on Columbian adolescents’ socioemotional functioning and explores whether effects differ depending on socioeconomic status. Results will inform our understanding of how the implications of economic disadvantage differ depending on contextual factors, which is necessary to redress economic disparities in wellbeing and stem growing income inequality.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Portia Miller, Dept. of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh

Individual Presentations

• Beyond Income Deprivation: Contextual Risks, Well-Being, and Parenting - Presenting Author: Rosanne M. Jocson, University of Michigan; Paula Britta C. Apines, Ateneo de Manila University

• The Role of Community Resources and Stressors in Explaining Income Gaps in Achievement - Presenting Author: Portia Miller, Dept. of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh; Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh

• Stuck in a Rut? Exploring Patterns of Poverty-Related Risks and Children’s Development over Time - Presenting Author: Ashley Isaia, University of Illinois at Chicago; Amanda L. Roy, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Acute Effects of Violence on Social and Emotional Development: Disentangling the effects of poverty and violence in Colombia - Presenting Author: Andres Molano, Universidad de los Andes; Arturo Harker, Universidad de los Andes