Material hardship and child socioemotional behaviors: Differences by types of hardship, timing, and duration

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Abstract

Child behavior problems are associated with long-term detrimental effects. A large body of literature looks at the association between income and child behavior but few studies examine this association with material hardship, an alternative economic indicator. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the following questions: (a) Is material hardship associated with child socioemotional behavior and are there differences by developmental timing, (b) Are particular hardships (bills, utilities, food, housing, medical) more strongly associated with child behavior, and (c) Are there differences in the association between short-term and long-term material hardship and child behavior? We find that children in households experiencing material hardship score significantly higher on externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Additionally, we find that a mother's inability to pay bills, experience of utility interruption, and housing instability are adversely related to child behavior. We also find that the association between material hardship and child behaviors is stronger at age 5 and that chronic aggregate hardship has a stronger association with child behavior.

Highlights

► We examine how material hardship is associated with child behaviors. ► Material hardship increases externalizing and internalizing behaviors. ► We find stronger associations for five year olds than for three year olds. ► Most hardship domains are associated with externalizing and internalizing behaviors. ► Bills and utility hardships are consistently associated with externalizing behavior.

Introduction

Concern about the financial welfare of low-income children has been a longstanding issue for policy makers. Substantial empirical evidence has demonstrated that financial hardship is related to adverse health, academic, behavioral, and social outcomes for children (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997). These results have implications for the intergenerational transmission of poverty as children who grow up in low-income families have poorer academic outcomes and poorer economic prospects. A large body of literature has found an association between economic wellbeing, as measured by income or poverty, and children's socioemotional behavior (Berger et al., 2009, Blau, 1999, Maurin, 2002, Morris and Gennetian, 2003, Shea, 2000, Taylor et al., 2004). Yet very little research has looked at consumption-based indicators of economic wellbeing and socioemotional outcomes (excepting Gershoff et al., 2007, Mistry et al., 2002). This article seeks to fill that gap by looking at the association between material hardship (going without basic necessities such as food or shelter) and its relationship to externalizing, internalizing and positive behaviors in young children. We are the first study to look at whether particular types of hardship are more strongly associated with child behavior. Programs that target specific types of material hardship may be able to help diminish the incidence of socioemotional problems in low income families and assist in reducing the transmission of poverty between generations.

In this paper we extend previous research on material hardship and child behavior in several ways. First, we look at five different dimensions of material hardship (inability to pay bills, food insecurity, housing insecurity, medical hardship and having your utilities cut off) to see whether certain types of material hardship are more likely to impact socioemotional adjustment in young children. Prior research has investigated the link between food insecurity and child behavior but no studies have considered other dimensions of hardship. Second, we investigate the timing (age 3 versus age 5) and duration of the experience of material hardship. Studies of income have shown that long-term income deprivation has larger effects on child wellbeing but no studies have looked at differences between sustained or short-term material hardship. Lastly, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study (FFCWB), a longitudinal study of births in large cities, which oversamples unmarried mothers at the time of birth and follows their children from birth to age 5. These data have several advantages. The oversample of non-marital births provides a large sample of racially and ethnically diverse families, many of whom are economically disadvantaged and who are disproportionately more likely to experience material hardship. The longitudinal nature of the data allows us to employ multiple methodological techniques to better assess the association between material hardship and child socioemotional outcomes. The FFCWB data is unique from other data because of the availability of rich information which allows us to control for confounding variables that may be associated with both the propensity to experience material hardship and child behavior. In addition, studies of income have shown that income deprivation is especially detrimental in early childhood, the time period covered in this study.

Specifically we aim to answer the following questions; (a) Is material hardship associated with child socioemotional behavior and are there differences by developmental timing, (b) Are particular hardships (inability to pay bills, having your utilities cut off, having unmet medical needs, housing insecurity or food hardship/insecurity) more strongly associated with child behavior, and are there differences by child's age, and (c) Are there differences in the association between short-term and long-term material hardship and child behavior?

Section snippets

Background

Child socioemotional behavior is associated with a number of outcomes in adulthood (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997). Behavior problems can affect children's ability to learn which in turn affects educational and economic outcomes (Claussens, Duncan, & Engel, 2009). Research on child and economic wellbeing has mostly focused on income and poverty measures but in recent years there has been a growing interest in using material hardship as a complementary measure (Beverly, 2001, Lerman, 2002,

Data

We used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWB) to test the hypothesis that material hardship is associated with poor socioemotional adjustment in children. The FFCWB study was representative of births in large US cities (with populations over 200,000) and was designed to oversample non-marital births. Mothers were randomly sampled in 75 hospitals in 20 cities between 1998 and 2000. Interviews were conducted with mothers and fathers at the birth of the child and when

Empirical strategy

We employed two multivariate models to examine the relationship between children's socioemotional development and mother's material hardship. First we predicted behavioral outcomes from material hardship using an ordinary least squares (OLS) model. We estimated the following equation:Yi=β0+β1MHi+β2Momi+β3Childi+εiwhere Yit denotes the child's score on a particular behavioral outcome at ages 3 or 5. MH represents measures of material wellbeing. We estimated OLS models for each of the three types

Sample description

Table 1 presents weighted descriptive statistics for all analytic variables by material hardship in Year 3. Forty percent of the sample report experiencing at least one hardship. In terms of the types of hardship, nearly a quarter of mothers report difficulty in paying bills and nearly twenty percent report having utility interruption in the past year. Ten percent experience housing instability and 12% report receiving free food or meals. About 5% of respondents report an unmet medical need.

The

Discussion

Our findings contribute to the large body of research that links childhood poverty and financial hardship with adverse child socioemotional outcomes (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997). There is a long tradition of examining poverty effects using income. However, there is a growing interest in using measures of material hardship to study consumption patterns and basic standard of living (Beverly, 2001), given the critiques of the official poverty measure (Citro & Michael, 1995) and the empirical

Conclusion

Most research and discussion on the economic wellbeing of low-income families and children's socioemotional adjustment has focused on income or poverty as measures. Despite the fact that the vast majority of this research links early childhood financial hardship with unfavorable socioemotional outcomes, surprisingly little work has examined the role material hardship might play in children's development. In the current study, we find new evidence of substantively important associations between

Acknowledgments

The project described was supported by Award Number R24HD058486 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development or the National Institutes of Health. The authors are grateful to Ofira Schwartz-Soicher, Jane Waldfogel, Ronald Mincy, Irwin Garfinkel, Anne Conway and

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