Household income loss, parental depression, and adolescent internalizing/externalizing behavior: A longitudinal study in seven countries

• In Event: Extended family roles, parenting, and child development

Abstract

A large body of previous research using the family stress model has examined relations among economic pressure, parental psychological distress, and child psychosocial development. However, the impact of income loss changes in the broader macro-economic cultural context in which families are situated. For example, in countries with more generous social safety nets or where helping extended family members is more normative, income loss may be less predictive of parent and child psychosocial outcomes. This study examined the longitudinal links among the adverse event of severe household income loss, parental depression, and adolescent internalizing and externalizing behavior. Longitudinal data from 1,082 families in 10 cultural groups in seven countries (Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Thailand, and United States) were included. The data on income were collected between 2011 and 2013, a period when Italy was in recession and many of the other countries had just started recovering from a period or multiple periods of recession. Across all countries, when the child was 12 years old (referencing a 12 month period somewhere between 2011 and 2013), 14% of families had experienced a decrease in their household annual income by more than 25% (ranging from 4% of families in Colombia to 25% of families in Naples, Italy). A multiple-group structural equation model was conducted with 5,000 bootstrap replications. We constrained all paths to be equal across cultures and then used an iterative process of referencing modification indices to indicate whether to release a path in a specific culture. We then used chi square difference tests to assess whether the restricted model with equal paths was significantly worse than the alternative model allowing a loading to differ in one culture. The final model released an average of 4.5 paths per culture (out of a possible 27) and fit the data well (RMSEA=.040 90% CI: .016, .056; CFI/TLI=.971/.962; SRMR=.073) revealed that controlling for child gender, parental education, household income, former severe income loss, and age 12 internalizing and externalizing behavior, maternal depression (age 13) fully mediated the relation between a family experiencing severe income loss (age 12) and child internalizing behavior (age 14) in all cultures except the Philippines. However, paternal depression did not mediate this relation. There was no significant relation with any of the variables and child externalizing in any of the cultural groups. Additionally, we found in Thailand, household income (standardized within cultural group) moderated the relation between severe income loss and both maternal and paternal depression. This study largely found effects of severe income loss on maternal depression and child internalizing, regardless of the level of income before the loss, indicating that although those living in poverty may be the most vulnerable to adverse effects on child development, in 9 out of 10 cultures in the study, the effects of severe income loss on family stress did not vary as a function of household income. This finding supports policies such as Universal Basic Income and cash transfers, to potentially mitigate the effects severe income loss.

Authors

• Susannah Zietz, Duke Univeristy
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer E. Lansford, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Qin Liu
  Non-Presenting Author

• Qian Long, Duke Kunshan University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Paul Odhiambo Oburu, Maseno University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Concetta Pastorelli, Sapienza University of Rome
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emma Sorbring, Högskolan Väst
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ann T. Skinner, Duke Univeristy
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sombat Tapanya, Private Practice
  Non-Presenting Author

• Liliana Uribe Tirado, Universidad de San Buenaventura
  Non-Presenting Author

• Saengduean Yotanyamaneewong, Chiang Mai University, Thailand
  Non-Presenting Author

• Liane Peña Alampay, Ateneo de Manila University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Suha Al-Hassan, The Hashemite University, Jordan; Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority, UAE
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dario Bacchini, University of Naples 'Federico II'
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marc H Bornstein, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD/NIH)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lei Chang, University of Macau
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kirby Deater-Deckard, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Di Giunta, Sapienza University of Rome
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kenneth A Dodge, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sevtap Gurdal, University West, Trollhättan
  Non-Presenting Author