Family and Community Drivers of Economic Disparities in School Readiness Skills

• In Event: 2-209 - Contextual Influences Promoting Resilience for Low-income Children: Evidence from Longitudinal and Experimental Data

Integrative Statement

Extensive evidence finds that children from low-income families enter school far behind their economically-advantaged counterparts in core academic school-readiness skills. These gaps serve as essential markers for continued disparities in educational achievement and attainment, and thus are primary targets for early intervention efforts. As such, it is crucial to delineate the forces that give rise to early academic skills gaps in order to better inform efforts which seek to disrupt the evolution of disparities. Prior theory and research point to the importance of young children’s access to key investments (e.g., high resourced neighborhoods, quality early education, cognitive stimulation) and their exposure to stressors (e.g., neighborhood crime, harsh parenting) as important forces affecting the development of school readiness skills. Yet prior research has not comprehensively assessed the relative importance of these investment and stress processes across key proximal contexts of early childhood development including family and community contexts. This study argues that both investment and stress contexts at the neighborhood level will be associated with investments and stress processes within families, together serving as key mediational paths linking family income disparities to young children’s academic school readiness skills.

This study uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) matched with a broad range of contextual administrative data. The ECLS-B followed a nationally representative cohort of approximately 10,700 children born in the United States in 2001, with 4 waves of data following children to age 5. Children’s reading and math skills at age 5 were directly assessed using validated instruments. Measures of family income, family investments (cognitive stimulation; emotional support), and family stressors (parental distress; harsh parenting) were derived from parent reports and structured observations. Data drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Economic Census, FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Database, EPA, and other sources were utilized to develop measures of community investments (cultural resources; health resources; educational resources; human capital; parks) and community stressors (pollution; violent crime; neighborhood disadvantage). These measures were geocoded and linked to family addresses, validating the optimal geographic scale for each measure.

Analyses incorporate structural equation modeling to assess whether community investment and stress characteristics mediate income disparities in children’s school readiness skills either directly or through family processes. Initial results indicate that family income’s associations with academic school readiness skills were explained in part by both community investments (human capital and cultural resources) and stressors (pollution and violent crime), and in turn through family investments (cognitive stimulation). Further analyses will assess the strengths of multiple indirect paths between family income disparities and children’s academic school readiness skills. Results will set the stage for this symposium by helping to identify key targets for intervention efforts, and will inform policy initiatives seeking to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of inequality.

Authors

• Rebekah Levine Coley, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Bryn Spielvogel, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Claudia Kruzik, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Portia Miller, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Betancur, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author