Neighbourhood and family influences on the cognitive ability of children in the British National Child Development Study

doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00362-2

Social Science & Medicine

Volume 53, Issue 5, September 2001, Pages 579-591

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00362-2 Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper investigates the association between family poverty, the level of deprivation in electoral wards and children's cognitive test scores using data from the second generation in the 1991 sweep of the British National Child Development Study (1958 birth cohort). Family poverty has a significant association with lower test scores in children of all ages (4–18 years). Neighbourhood poverty has a significant association with lower test scores in children aged 4–5 years which, though somewhat attenuated, is independent of other socioeconomic indicators. Among children aged between 6 and 9 years, the association with neighbourhood deprivation is statistically accounted for by individual characteristics. Among children aged between 10 and 18 years, levels of neighbourhood deprivation were for the most part statistically insignificant. The family poverty — test score association among children aged between 10 and 18 years was mediated by the home environment. Mediated effects were stronger for family poverty — test score associations than for neighbourhood poverty. The use of a neighbourhood-level exposure related to the social environment leads to an understanding of the social determinants of children's outcomes that is more than the sum of individual and family-level measures. However, the size of the estimated effects of neighbourhood conditions is much smaller than the estimated effects of family-level conditions. Thus, it appears that families still should be viewed as the key agents in promoting positive development in children.

Section snippets

Data

The National Child Development Study (NCDS) is a study of over 17,000 people in Britain born between the 3 and 9 of March in 1958. Follow-up sweeps took place in 1965, 1969, 1974, 1981 and 1991. The 1991 NCDS follow-up obtained information not only from the cohort member, but from the children of 1 in 3 cohort members and from the mother of these children (Ferri, 1993). In this paper we use data from both children who had a mother who was an NCDS cohort member and children who had a father who

Results

The age of the child is strongly related to the child's family structure (Table 1). Children aged 10 and over are more likely than children aged 4– 5 or 6–9 years to have been born outside partnerships or to have experienced a change in the family situation (Clarke, Di Salvo, Joshi, & Wright, 1997). Table 1 shows that children in older age groups are more likely than younger children to have a cohort member parent with low educational qualifications, to have low family incomes or to live in

Discussion

Our results are similar to those of Brooks-Gunn et al. (1997). In both studies neighbourhood conditions are significant predictors of developmental outcomes around the time of transition to school. We had assumed that the magnitude of neighbourhood effects would increase as children pass from early to middle childhood and from middle childhood to adolescence. Implicit in this assumption is the belief that neighbourhood influences are direct and that they reflect the amount of time children

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A community’s poverty alone has been found to be associated with lower test scores for children aged 4–5 years. Although somewhat attenuated, this association is independent of other socioeconomic indicators (McCulloch & Joshi, 2001). Rural communities are often characterized by restricted access to child care, health care, and social services, including mental health services, domestic violence services, and emergency food (Flora, Flora, & Gasteyer, 2018; Lichter, Parisi, Taquino, & Beaulieu, 2008).
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^☆: Funded under ESRC Programme Children 5–16: Growing into the 21st Century, Grant L129251027 and ESRC Programme Cities and Competitiveness, Grant L130251010.

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Neighbourhood and family influences on the cognitive ability of children in the British National Child Development Study☆

Abstract

Section snippets

Data

Results

Discussion

Neighborhood, family and individual processes as they influence child and adolescent outcomes

Do neighborhoods affect child and adolescent development?

American Journal of Sociology

Neighborhood and family influences on the intellectual and behavioural competence of preschool and early school-age children

Social capital in the creation of human capital

American Journal of Sociology

Linking economic hardship to marital quality and instability

Journal of Marriage and the Family

Is it cash the deprived are short of?

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A

Intergenerational mobility in Britain

Economic Journal

Conceptual and methodological issues in estimating causal effects of neighborhoods and family conditions on individual development

Peabody picture vocabulary test-revised

Peabody individual achievement test manual

Measuring peer group effectsA study of teenage behaviour

Journal of Political Economy

Transitions and turning points

Navigating the passage from childhood through adolescence. Developmental Psychology

New inequalitiesThe changing distribution of income and wealth in the United Kingdom

Diverse family living situations and child developmentA multi-level analysis comparing longitudinal evidence from Britain and the United States

International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family

Does neighborhood and family poverty affect mothers’ parenting, mental health and social support?

Journal of Marriage and the Family

Are neighborhood effects on young children mediated by features of the home environment ?