Economic hardship negatively influences youth development, operating through direct and indirect pathways that disrupt family functioning. Financial strain, the subjective perception of economic hardship, may be a pivotal mechanism linking family financial challenges to youth maladjustment, particularly when examined alongside family conflict and child behavior. Using three annual waves from the Adolescent Brain & Cognitive Development (ABCD) study (N = 11,868), this study evaluated whether financial strain predicts youth problem behaviors (internalizing and externalizing) via family conflict and whether this pathway operates independently of income level. We used parent-reported financial strain and youth-reported family conflict, emphasizing children’s perspectives on their family environment. Mediation models controlled for prior levels of all variables and family income and examined child sex as a potential moderator. Results demonstrated that more financial strain significantly predicted greater family conflict, which in turn mediated the effect of financial strain on both internalizing and externalizing behaviors two years later, even after accounting for income and past conflict and problem behaviors. Moderated mediation analyses indicated no significant differences by child sex. This study underscores the pivotal role of financial strain in shaping family conflict and youth maladjustment, regardless of socioeconomic background. By focusing on children’s perceptions of family dynamics, this work contributes to a more holistic understanding of the family environment and identifies intervention targets to mitigate the cascading effects of economic hardship on youth.
Economic hardship is a well-known risk factor for youth maladjustment (Assing-Murray & Lebrun-Harris, 2020; Barnhart et al., 2022; Schenck-Fontaine & Panico, 2019). Decades of empirical research have demonstrated that families with limited financial resources have children who experience disproportionately high levels of behavioral, psychological, and academic problems (Assing-Murray & Lebrun-Harris, 2020; Barnhart et al., 2022; Mistry & Elenbaas, 2021). Furthermore, financial challenges are also associated with hostile and negative family dynamics (Kalil et al., 2020; Wadsworth & Compas, 2002), which have indirect but potent effects on child adjustment (Conger et al., 1994; Paat, 2011). Taken together, families who have both strained finances and strained intra-familial dynamics may exist in an optimal environment for the development of youth maladjustment.
Financial strain, or the extent to which an individual feels worry, anxiety, or an inability to cope with their financial state (French & Vigne, 2019), is a unique measure of financial hardship that highlights the psychological effects of perceived limited resources. Prior studies have demonstrated that financial strain may be a key contributor to the relation between economic hardship and child outcomes (Argabright et al., 2022; McLanahan, 2009). In other words, it may be the extent to which parents are worried about their financial situation, rather than the limited financial resources themselves, that interrupts optimal trajectories of child development. While numerous studies have explored the associations between financial strain and impacts on parents and parenting, these impacts are generally measured from the parents’ perspective and may include informant bias (Ringoot et al., 2015). The current study, in contrast, considers the child’s perspective on the family environment to elucidate associations between financial strain, harsh, negative family environment, and child psychological outcomes. By modeling youths’ perception of family dynamics, we can have a better understanding of the meaningful impact of economic hardship on family dynamics and youth maladjustment.
Financial Hardship and Child Outcomes
Direct Effects
Financial hardship has direct, long-term, devastating effects on children’s outcomes. In a recent meta-analysis, Cooper & Stewart (2021) found that, across longitudinal studies, increases in household income causally resulted in increases in children’s cognitive development, social-behavioral skills, and physical health. These effects were particularly profound for households experiencing chronic low income (Cooper & Stewart, 2021). The cause is multi-pronged and often multiplicative. Families experiencing financial hardship live in poorer neighborhoods (Wodtke et al., 2016), and numerous studies have shown that neighborhood hardship can “come through the front door” and impact family life and children’s adjustment (May et al., 2018). Poor physical environment, both in the home and outside in the neighborhood, leads to poorer child physical and psychological outcomes (Evans, 2006, 2021). Relatedly, having limited disposable income may force families to divert money away from child-related purchases, including toys, books, and educational experiences, in favor of paying bills (Gennetian et al., 2022). Finally, families experiencing financial hardship often work precarious jobs, such as in the service industry, where wages are low and hours are irregular. Children in these families, in turn, may experience instability in the home and exhibit more problem behaviors (Schneider & Harknett, 2022).
Indirect Effects
In addition to these direct impacts, developmental researchers have assessed the indirect impacts of family financial struggles on child maladjustment. The seminal Family Stress Model (FSM; Conger et al., 1992) posited that it is through financial strain’s direct effect on parents that youth are indirectly impacted by changes in family financial status. Subsequently, numerous models have found that aspects of parental distress transmit the effects of family financial difficulties to children (see Masarik & Conger, 2017). Specifically, economic hardship (defined as objective income/job loss) leads to financial strain, which places parents in distress and leads to myriad negative outcomes including marital violence (Lucero et al., 2016), parental psychopathology (Le et al., 2023), disrupted parenting (Lee et al., 2011; Schmiedeberg & Bozoyan, 2021), and eventually, worse child outcomes (see Masarik & Conger, 2017, Fig. 1).
Fig. 1
Hypothesized model in which the effect of financial strain on children’s later problem behaviors is mediated in part by family conflict and moderated by child sex. Hypothesized covariates include past family conflict, past problem behaviors, and family income
We know less of how the strain of financial difficulties may color the larger family environment, rather than specifically parental distress. It may be that this perceived strain not only influences how parents feel about their family dynamics, but that this strain spills over into the vibe of the family environment. Youth may not be aware of the financial concerns, but may instead be aware of subtle differences in how the family interacts. Examining this specific indirect pathway from financial strain to problem behaviors (rather than focusing on parent distress) will help us better understand the process of economic hardship and financial strain have on family dynamics broadly and youth adjustment.
Family Dynamics as a Pathway
While previous work has considered multiple parent-level pathways through which financial strain impacts youth adjustment (e.g., parental stress and psychopathology, parental relational issues with both children and partners, etc.), less work has empirically examined broad family environment as such a pathway. Family conflict – defined as a global negative, hostile interaction style that is pervasive among family members (Fosco et al., 2012) – can be conceptualized as a chronic stressor experienced by families and children (Aaron & Black, in print; Morelli et al., 2022). Unlike many other stressors, some family conflict is considered normative, even developmentally necessary, for children transitioning into adolescence (Bülow et al., 2021; Steinberg, 2001). However, too much conflict in the family is clearly linked to concurrent and later maladjustment in children and young adults (Choe et al., 2014; Morelli et al., 2022, 2023). Indeed, Xerxa et al. (2020) found that even family conflict prior to the target child’s birth predicted that child’s problem behaviors a decade later, suggesting that conflict can be pervasive, its effects long-lasting, and its impact felt across the entire family unit.
The impact of family conflict may be particularly strong for families experiencing economic hardship. Low-income families report more conflict than more affluent families (DeCarlo Santiago & Wadsworth, 2009; Duran et al., 2020), and conflict is thus yet another cumulative stressor for those youth. However, all families, regardless of income, can experience financial strain. While affluent families are often considered protected from such concerns, it may be that the perception of financial strain is as important to the risk of family conflict as is objective family income. Indeed, Gauthier & Furstenberg (2010) showed that financial strain is spread across all income levels, with more than 60% of middle-class families reporting strained finances. Youth whose parents report financial strain engage in more aggressive behaviors, with the effect being fully mediated through greater parent-child or interparental conflict (Wang et al., 2022). Likewise, families reporting high “family stress” (defined as economic strain and household chaos) have children who exhibit more problem behaviors due to increases in parent-child conflict (Li et al., 2025). Indeed it seems that the strain felt by parents, even if youth are unaware of the family finances, spills over into the family environment, particularly with regard to increases in negative interactions among members of the family unit.
Much past research on the influence of perceived economic hardship on children’s adjustment has focused on tracing the impact through parental psychological concerns, such as psychopathology, depressive symptoms, stress, and marital conflict. Given the strong association between living in a heavily conflictual home and later maladjustment, it may be that aspects of the family environment may also act as a mediator through which parents’ perceived financial strain leads to children’s problem behaviors. If so, family environment, particularly negative conflict, may be the mechanism through which financial strain on parents interrupts the optimal socio-emotional adjustment in older children, rather than solely parental experiences or dyadic conflict. Further, there is mixed understanding of how child sex may influence the relation between family environment and child maladjustment (e.g., Black & Aaron, in print; Costello et al., 2007; Skeer et al., 2011). Specifically, it is unknown if youth’s perspective of family conflict levels in the context of financial strain differs by child sex and may subsequently impact well-established sex differences in the development of problem behaviors (Humphreys et al., 2019).
The Present Study
This study examined the longitudinal relations between financial strain, family conflict, and children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors using three annual waves of data from the Adolescent Brain & Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, beginning when youth were 9–10 years old (baseline). While similar to Conger et al. (1994) FSM, we examined an alternative hypothesis that deviates from the FSM in two crucial ways. First, we considered the possibility that financial strain is not limited to families experiencing low income. By including income in our models as a covariate, rather than an exogeneous predictor, we were able to assess if the perception of financial strain can have impacts across all income brackets or if only low-income families are impacted. Second, we broadened prior notions about the impact of family strain by considering impacts on holistic family functioning via youths’ perceptions of their family interactions as hostile, negative, and malevolent. The following hypotheses were tested:
Hypothesis 1: Families experiencing financial strain at baseline will also experience greater conflict among family members at the one-year follow-up, leading to greater internalizing and externalizing behaviors in target children at the two-year follow-up.
Hypothesis 2: We expect that the impact of financial strain on family conflict and consequently on problem behaviors will not be better explained by differences in family income. Specifically, while we expect both financial strain and family conflict to be more common in lower income families, we hypothesize that the effect of financial strain on problem behaviors via family conflict will be maintained when the variance associated with family income is accounted for in the model.
Hypothesis 3: Given past findings that boys and girls engage in problem behaviors at different rates (Gutman & Codiroli McMaster, 2020; Moffitt & Caspi, 2001), we expect that the mediation of the relation between financial strain and problem behaviors via family conflict will be moderated by child sex assigned at birth.
The present study adds to the available literature in three main ways. First, we focused on overall family conflict, rather than interparental conflict (see Landers‐Potts et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2013), as the mediator of the relation between financial strain and problem behaviors. By operationalizing conflict from a whole-family viewpoint, this mediation analysis provides a more holistic and ecologically valid understanding of how financial strain affects family dynamics and subsequent youth outcomes. Second, we use multiple reporters of family-level constructs—namely, parent reports of financial strain and youth reports of family conflict. This allows us to assess how parents’ felt strain influences the way youth perceive their family interactions, rather than possibly how parents view their family’s dynamics in light of their own experienced financial strain. Finally, we strengthen our mediation models by accounting for past levels of study variables (i.e., family conflict and problem behaviors) as well as family income. We are thus able to clearly infer causality between our constructs of interest over time as well as ascertain if the perceived financial strain is to blame rather than the more objective measure of limited income. Our hypothesized model is shown in Fig. 1.
Method
Population and Sample
The present study used the first three annual waves of the ABCD longitudinal study, which follows a sample of 11,868 youth (Mage at baseline = 9.48, SD = 0.51 years) and one of their parents (Mage at baseline = 39.96, SD = 6.84 years; 85.3% biological mothers). The ABCD sample is population-representative (see Procedure below), recruited from across the United States. Nearly half of the youth sample was female (47.9%) and identified as White (49.5%). Retention is high, with less than 15% of the original sample missing a single assessment through the first three waves (Dai et al., 2022; Feldstein Ewing et al., 2018). Further information on the ABCD study can be found in Hoffman et al. (2022) and more details about the sample are found in Table 1.
Table 1
Demographic and descriptive statistics of the sample
Variable
%
M(SD)
n
Child sex
11868
Female
48%
Child race/ethnicity
11867
Asian
2.1%
Black
15.0%
Hispanic
20.3%
White
52.0%
Multi-racial/other
10.5%
Financial strain year 1
0.47 (1.10)
11733
Family income year 1
10851
Under $5000
3.8%
$5000-$12,000
3.9%
$12,000-$16,000
2.5%
$16,000-$25,000
4.8%
$25,000-$35,000
6.0%
$35,000-$50,000
8.6%
$50,000-$75,000
13.8%
$75,000-$100,000
14.5%
$100,000-$200,000
30.5%
Over $200,000
11.5%
Family conflict year 1
2.41 (3.82)
11844
Family conflict year 2
1.92 (3.53)
11213
Internalizing problems year 1
5.05 (30.57)
11860
Internalizing problems year 2
5.12 (30.94)
11202
Internalizing problems year 3
4.94 (31.55)
8081
Externalizing problems year 1
4.46 (34.40)
11860
Externalizing problems year 2
4.18 (32.04)
11202
Externalizing problems year 3
3.93 (30.49)
8081
Measures
Financial Strain
Parent’s perception of family financial strain was measured with the Parent-Reported Financial Adversity Questionnaire (PRFQ; Diemer et al., 2013), which consists of seven items assessing financial challenges in the past 12 months. Parents answered yes/no questions such as: [In the past 12 months, has your family…] …needed food but couldn’t afford to buy it?, …been evicted from your home for not paying the rent or mortgage?, …had someone who needed to go to the dentist but you couldn’t afford it? These items were summed to create a total financial strain score that could range from zero to seven. The PRFQ showed adequate reliability in the current sample (Cronbach’s α = 0.75).
Family Income
At the baseline assessment, parents were asked to report their 12-month income from wages, social security, child support, and other sources as well as 12-month income from anyone else in the home (if applicable). This combined income variable was coded ordinally ranging from 1–10 (1 = under $5000; 2 = $5000 to $11,999; etc.; see Table 1) and was used as a continuous covariate to assess the effect of financial strain on family dynamics and youth maladjustment over and above the effect of actual income.
Family Environment Scale-Family Conflict Subscale (FES-Conflict)
Parents and children each completed the Family Conflict subscale of the Family Environment Scale (FES-Conflict; Moos & Moos, 1976) at all three timepoints. This nine-item subscale assesses level of within-family conflict with items such as, “We fight a lot in our family,” “Family members often criticize each other,” and “Family members often try to one-up or out-do each other.” Each item is answered in True/False format and summed across the subscale separately for both parent and child. Due to the possibility of observer bias (i.e., parents reporting on financial strain, youth symptoms, and family conflict) and our intent to examine youths’ perception of family conflict, we used only youth-reported family conflict in the present study. The present study utilized the baseline and the 1 year follow-up data. Reliability was adequate (Cronbach’s α = 0.67–0.68), reflecting the reliability found in past studies (Aaron & Black, in print; Holtzman & Roberts, 2012) and the range of types of conflict addressed.
Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)
At each timepoint, parents completed the CBCL, a 120-item, standardized instrument which asks caregivers of 6–18-year-old youth to report on a variety of behaviors (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2014). Each item is answered on a 3-point scale, with 0 indicating the item is not true for the caregiver’s child, 1 indicating it is sometimes true, and 2 indicating it is often true. These items are summed into two composite scores, one each for internalizing behaviors (33 items; e.g., worrying, depressive states, withdrawal) and for externalizing behaviors (35 items; e.g., rule-breaking, aggression). Reliability at all time points for both subscales were high (Cronbach’s α = 0.87–0.90).
Procedure
Families were recruited from households in defined catchment areas in 21 study sites between 2016 and 2018 with the intent of creating a population-representative, diverse sample (Garavan et al., 2018). Families were excluded for the following reasons: lack of English proficiency in youth, presence of severe medical, neurological, intellectual, or sensory limitations that may affect the youth’s ability to comply with protocol, and inability or unwillingness to complete an MRI scan at baseline. Study protocols for the ABCD Study were approved by the University of California, San Diego Institutional Review Board (IRB; IRB #160091), all ABCD Study data collection sites were approved by their respective IRBs, and parent written consent and child assent were obtained from each participant. The authors’ institutional review board deemed the present study as secondary analysis of deidentified data and therefore not subject to review.
Data Retrieval
Data were collected across 21 sites across the United States beginning in 2017. The present study used the first three waves of data collection, ending in 2021 (see Fig. 1). All data presented herein were processed and cleaned by ABCD study staff and were accessed on December 16, 2022 from the ABCD Annual Curated Release 5.0 [https://doi.org/10.15154/1523041] by the first author.
Data Analytic Plan
We built our mediation models in an iterative process using regression analyses in Mplus 8.1 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017). All models were conducted separately with financial strain predicting externalizing or internalizing behavior, mediated by family conflict. First, we estimated direct and indirect paths between financial strain at baseline, family conflict one year later, and externalizing or internalizing two years after the baseline assessment. Second, we included past measures of family conflict and problem behaviors (i.e., family conflict at baseline and externalizing or internalizing at the one-year follow-up) into the model. Next, we included income at baseline into the model to account for the possibility that financial strain is working as a proxy for income (i.e., that only low-income families report high levels of strain). Finally, we examined the role of child sex as a moderator in each model, testing all three paths (financial strain predicts family conflict, family conflict predicts problem behaviors, and financial strain predicts problem behaviors) for differences between boys and girls, given the long history of sex differences in both internalizing and externalizing behavior (Gutman & Codiroli McMaster, 2020; Moffitt & Caspi, 2001) and early findings suggesting sex-based differences in the impact of perceived family conflict (Costello et al., 2007; Skeer et al., 2011). All models were built following Stride et al. (2015) Mplus code posted online, based on Hayes’ (2017) original PROCESS macro for mediation and conditional process analyses.
Results
Bivariate Correlation Analyses
Associations between study variables are shown in Table 2. Cross-time, within-construct correlations were all positive and moderate as would be expected. Financial strain was positively associated with family conflict and problem behaviors across time and negatively associated with income. Of interest are the associations between problem behaviors and family conflict: the magnitude of the effect of family conflict on child outcomes was roughly twice as strong for externalizing (rs = 0.13–0.19) as it was for internalizing behavior (rs = 0.05–0.10). Families reporting lower income also experienced greater financial strain, youth-reported family conflict, and problem behaviors at all timepoints. Further, families with a male target child experienced more family conflict and reported their child engaging in more externalizing behaviors.
Table 2
Descriptive statistics and bivariate associations between study variables
Variable (timepoint)
M(SD)/%
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1. Financial strain (1)
0.47 (1.10)
-
2. Family conflict (1)
2.05 (1.95)
0.11***
-
3. Family conflict (2)
1.93 (1.88)
0.13***
0.46***
-
4. Externalizing (1)
4.46 (5.87)
0.22***
0.18***
0.18***
-
5. Externalizing (2)
4.22 (5.69)
0.19***
0.17***
0.19***
0.75***
-
6. Externalizing (3)
4.05 (5.62)
0.18***
0.13***
0.18***
0.70***
0.74***
-
7. Internalizing (1)
5.05 (5.53)
0.19***
0.09***
0.09***
0.58***
0.44***
0.42***
-
8. Internalizing (2)
5.13 (5.57)
0.14***
0.08***
0.10***
0.43***
0.57***
0.43***
0.69***
-
9. Internalizing (3)
4.99 (5.68)
0.13***
0.05***
0.08***
0.39***
0.41***
0.55***
0.65***
0.69***
-
10. Income (1)
4.91 (2.71)
−0.21***
−0.10***
−0.12***
−0.12***
−0.11***
−0.09**
−0.10***
−0.08***
−0.07***
11. Child sex (female)
47.8%
−0.06
−0.06***
−0.07***
−0.12***
−0.11***
−0.09***
−0.01
0.01
−0.04**
−0.01
*** p < 0.001. ** p < 0.01
Mediation Analyses
Mediation models including all covariates are shown in Tables 3 and 4. For externalizing behaviors (Table 3), financial strain predicted higher family conflict at 1 year later, over and above the effects of income, child sex, and concurrent family conflict levels. Heightened family conflict mediated the path between financial strain at baseline and externalizing behaviors two years later, even when controlling for child sex, income, and past externalizing behavior. A pattern was found with internalizing behaviors (Table 4), with families experiencing financial strain reporting their children engaging in more internalizing behaviors via heightened family conflict, over and above past behavior, conflict, income, and child sex differences.
Table 3
Financial strain predicts externalizing behavior via family conflict
b
SE
β
Externalizing Time 3 predicted by:
Family Conflict Time 2a
0.070
0.024
0.024**
Financial Strain Time 1b
0.184
0.045
0.036***
Covariates:
Externalizing Time 2
0.733
0.008
0.740***
Income Time 1
0.002
0.021
0.001
Child sex
−0.188
0.086
−0.017*
Family Conflict Time 2 predicted by:
Financial Strain Time 1c
0.098
0.017
0.056***
Covariates:
Family Conflict Time 1
0.425
0.009
0.439***
Income Time 1
−0.058
0.008
−0.073***
Child sex
−0.177
0.033
−0.047***
***p < 0.001. **p < 0.01. *p < 0.05
athe “b” path
bthe “c’ ” path
cthe “a” path
Table 4
Financial strain predicts internalizing behavior via family conflict
b
SE
β
Internalizing Time 3 predicted by:
Family Conflict Time 2a
0.051
0.026
0.017*
Financial Strain Time 1b
0.197
0.050
0.038***
Covariates:
Internalizing Time 2
0.694
0.009
0.686***
Income Time 1
0.029
0.023
0.012
Child sex
0.410
0.095
0.037***
Family Conflict Time 2 predicted by:
Financial Strain Time 1c
0.098
0.017
0.056***
Covariates:
Family Conflict Time 1
0.425
0.009
0.439***
Income Time 1
−0.058
0.008
−0.073***
Child sex
−0.177
0.033
−0.047***
***p < 0.001. *p < 0.05
athe “b” path
bthe “c’ ” path
cthe “a” path
Moderated Mediation Analyses
We tested three forms of moderated mediation by child sex for each model predicting externalizing or internalizing behavior: along the “a” path (family conflict regressed on financial strain), along the “b” path (externalizing/internalizing regressed on family conflict), and along the “c’” path (externalizing/internalizing regressed on financial strain and conflict). In these models, we included interaction terms using the child sex variable to test the whether the impact of financial strain on problem behaviors, via family conflict, differed for boys and girls. Surprisingly, none of the interaction terms with child sex were significant predictors of externalizing or internalizing behavior, and thus none of the paths in the mediations differed by sex. Given the significant bivariate associations between child sex and several study variables, however, we retained child sex as a covariate in the models shown in Tables 3 and 4.
Discussion
The present study assessed three hypotheses concerning the potential direct and/or indirect effects of financial strain on children’s problem behaviors via family conflict levels in late childhood. We found that, over and above the effects of income, parents’ perceived financial difficulties were associated with a greater likelihood of their children engaging in externalizing and internalizing behaviors two years later, both directly and through heightened levels of family conflict. Surprisingly, none of these effects were moderated by child sex, which we expected to differentially predict how financial strain impacts boys’ and girls’ problem behaviors and their perception of family dynamics.
The findings of the present study add to the burgeoning literature on the intricate relation between family dynamics and economic hardship and how these interrelated stressors can coalesce and result in greater behavioral difficulties for youth. Using a large, population-representative sample, we were able to not only account for past levels of study variables (thus ensuring the effects we uncovered were not due to already elevated levels of family conflict or problem behavior) but also uncover small effects that, while statistically and conceptually meaningful, may not have been uncovered in other samples. This is particularly poignant when examining family dynamics that are expected to compound over time and may have a cascading effect (e.g., Morelli et al., 2022, 2023).
The fact that financial strain predicts both indirect and direct changes on children’s maladjustment over and beyond the impact of family income is a subtle yet important finding of the present study that is distinct from and adds to classical Family Stress Model findings. Conger’s (1994) FSM posits that objective economic hardship (e.g., loss of income) indirectly leads to child adjustment problems via subjective financial strain and parental distress. However, we set out to examine if the presence of parental concerns over finances, regardless of family income, lead to increased holistic family conflict and child behavior problems. Indeed, regardless of income, the presence of financial strain seemed to interrupt optimal family and child processes. This is an important addition to models of economic hardship, which often focus on living below the poverty line, using supplemental income such as food stamps, or responding to a loss of wages, as it shows that it is not only our poorest families that are impacted. Indeed, Gauthier & Furstenberg (2010) found that perceived financial strain was not limited to the lowest of family incomes, instead being reported by adults in middle- and upper-class families as well.
Financial strain was found to be both directly and indirectly (through conflict) impactful on youths’ adjustment. Evidence of a direct path from financial strain to youth maladjustment, suggesting that increased economic worries are associated with increased problem behaviors, is consistent with previous research (Argabright et al., 2022). The indirect effect between financial strain and youth problem behaviors through family conflict, indicating that changes in financial strain lead to subsequent changes in family environment which then impacts youth outcomes, suggests that even if youth are not aware of their parents’ economic concerns, they are still experiencing hostile or negative interactions between family members that may be exacerbated or even caused by parents’ experience of financial strain, which leads to subsequent increases in maladjustment. Even more compelling is that this indirect effect remains when controlling for the effect of family income; that is, we see youth and families impacted by their parents’ financial concerns even in middle- and upper-class families with objectively more resources.
Given the extensive literature around the pervasive differences in internalizing and externalizing problems between boys and girls, it was surprising to find no moderating effect of child sex on this indirect effect model. While there is less reason to expect sex differences in the experience of financial strain (e.g., Kalil et al., 2020), other research has shown that boys’ and girls’ adaptation to stressors show different patterns. Recent work by Yoo and Jang (2023) found that financial stress due to the COVID-19 lockdowns was most impactful for female adolescents, particularly those whose families reported significant financial decline due to the pandemic. Likewise, Gibbons et al. (2023) found that boys’ behavior problems were impacted by material deprivation and/or perceived financial strain, but not girls’. Both of these projects examined large, population-representative samples was we did; why, therefore, did we not find supporting evidence of sex-based patterns of youths’ reactions to financial strain? One explanation may lie in our a priori decision to include past levels of study variables as covariates. Perhaps what seem to be sex differences in the effects of financial concerns on problem behaviors are, in fact, merely artifacts of differences in these behaviors that are well-documented. Indeed, seminal work by Conger and colleagues (Conger et al., 1994) discuss the importance of their similar null-by-sex findings, suggesting that differences in internalizing and externalizing behaviors in boys and girls continues to exist overall but may not play a role in the development of these behaviors.
Strengths & Limitations
Several features of the present study further strengthen our findings. By including prior levels of both family conflict and problem behaviors as covariates in our models, we demonstrated that we are not simply predicting continuity of youth problem behaviors over time. Rather, by controlling for past levels of family conflict and behavior difficulties, we found that financial strain leads to an increase in externalizing and internalizing behaviors through the increase of family conflict. Compared to past research with multi-year gaps between assessment points (e.g., Morelli et al., 2022; Xerxa et al., 2020), the ABCD study collects annual waves of assessment data which allowed us to capture the processes through which financial strain leads to externalizing behavior in a more developmentally sensitive manner. Finally, we used children’s rather than parents’ reports of family conflict to reduce informant bias by parents but also to better assess how children’s perception of family dynamics is influenced by financial strain as reported by the parent.
The present study was not without its limitations. Ideally, reports of youths’ problem behaviors would have been reported by someone who is not the parent or child, such as a teacher, to fully remove the possibility of reporter bias. The ABCD study only measured financial strain from the perception of the target parent; data on the youths’ perception of financial strain on the family was not available, though this would give us even more information on the transmission of economic hardship on children’s behaviors. This may be a minor limitation, however, given the age range of the child participants in this study and children’s typically limited understanding of the nuances of their families’ financial situations (Destin & Debrosse, 2017; Goodman et al., 2000; Mistry et al., 2015). Further, the only measures of family financial status in the present study were income and financial strain. While our measure of financial strain captures several different ways in which families can struggle with money (including being unable to afford a doctor, missing a rent or mortgage payment, etc.), this measure may not capture all instances of economic hardship on families. For example, this measure does not capture fear of income or job loss, use or lack of emergency funds, or surprise expenses such as home repairs or medical expenses. Finally, while the use of perceived financial strain as the exogenous variable in our model is a strength, it does not capture other family-level financial considerations which may be influencing both dynamics in the family and youths’ maladjustment. Living in poorer areas, neighborhood crime, and attending less affluential schools likely all impact the indirect relation we uncovered in the present study yet were beyond the scope of this study to examine. Numerous researchers have examined the multi-faceted nature of economic hardship (see Evans, 2021) and future studies should continue to consider the inherent complexity of the experience of financial strain.
Clinical Implications
These findings support the importance of a family-centered approach to intervention for early adolescent delinquency, aggression, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. Addressing the behaviors alone not only limits clinician’s abilities to intervene with the dysfunctional levels of conflict at home but also may occur too late in the developmental progression of problem behaviors. Indeed, our analyses suggested that family circumstances two years prior predict later externalizing or internalizing behavior better than past behavior. Further, the classic FSM states that economic pressure occurs due to (or via) economic hardship (such as job loss, loss of wages, etc.). However, we found that the association between income and financial strain, while positive, was small to moderate (see Table 1). When we controlled for the effect of income in our models, financial strain continued to predict both family conflict levels and (directly and indirectly) children’s externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Thus, clinicians should be aware and prepared that their middle- and upper-class families are also susceptible to the far-reaching impacts of financial uncertainty and stress. This may be particularly clinically relevant during times of financial upheaval, such as during and after the COVID-19 lockdowns which were financially difficult for many families across the income range.
In the present study, we found that families perceiving themselves to be under financial strain experienced greater family conflict and more youth maladjustment, regardless of objective income level. Though there is a long history of research showing different developmental trajectories of types of problem behaviors, the indirect effect of financial strain on problem behaviors via family conflict did not differ by child sex. Clinically, our findings demonstrate that subjective financial strain impacts youth development and that youth may adopt their parents’ financial worries, resulting in greater family discord and hostility. As such, ameliorating financial strain may be a reasonable target for intervention within family-based treatments.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Aaron, L., & Black, S. R. (in print). Prior externalizing, but not internalizing, symptoms predict subsequent family conflict in emerging adolescence: A longitudinal study. Development and Psychopathology. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579425100278.
Achenbach, T. M., & Rescorla, L. A. (2014). The Achenbach system of empirically based assessment (ASEBA) for ages 1.5 to 18 years. In The use of psychological testing for treatment planning and outcomes assessment (pp. 179–213). Routledge.
Argabright, S. T., Tran, K. T., Visoki, E., DiDomenico, G. E., Moore, T. M., & Barzilay, R. (2022). COVID-19-related financial strain and adolescent mental health. The Lancet Regional Health - Americas, 16, 100391 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2022.100391.CrossRefPubMed
Assing-Murray, E., & Lebrun-Harris, L. (2020). Associations between parent-reported family economic hardship and mental health conditions in U.S. children. Journal of Children and Poverty, 26(2), 191–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/10796126.2020.1764188.CrossRef
Barnhart, S., Garcia, A. R., & Karcher, N. R. (2022). Adolescent mental health and family economic hardships: The roles of adverse childhood experiences and family conflict. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 51(12), 2294–2311.PubMedCrossRef
Black, S. R., & Aaron, L. (in print). Youth irritability as consequence and predictor of family conflict from late childhood to early adolescence. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6cbfe_v1.
Bülow, A., Keijsers, L., Boele, S., van Roekel, E., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2021). Parenting adolescents in times of a pandemic: Changes in relationship quality, autonomy support, and parental control? Developmental Psychology, 57(10), 1582–1596.PubMedCrossRef
Choe, D. E., Stoddard, S. A., & Zimmerman, M. A. (2014). Developmental trajectories of African American adolescents’ family conflict: Differences in mental health problems in young adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 50(4), 1226–1232. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035199.CrossRefPubMed
Conger, R. D., Conger, K. J., Elder, G. H., Lorenz, F. O., Simons, R. L., & Whitbeck, L. B. (1992). A family process model of economic hardship and adjustment of early adolescent boys. Child Development, 63(3), 526–541. https://doi.org/10.2307/1131344.CrossRefPubMed
Conger, R. D., Ge, X., Elder, G. H., Lorenz, F. O., & Simons, R. L. (1994). Economic stress, coercive family process, and developmental problems of adolescents. Child Development, 65(2), 541–561. https://doi.org/10.2307/1131401.CrossRefPubMed
Cooper, K., & Stewart, K. (2021). Does household income affect children’s outcomes? A systematic review of the evidence. Child Indicators Research, 14(3), 981–1005. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-020-09782-0.CrossRef
Dai, H. D., Doucet, G. E., Wang, Y., Puga, T., Samson, K., Xiao, P., & Khan, A. S. (2022). Longitudinal assessments of neurocognitive performance and brain structure associated with initiation of tobacco use in children, 2016–2021. JAMA Network Open, 5(8), e2225991 https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.25991.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
DeCarlo Santiago, C., & Wadsworth, M. E. (2009). Coping with family conflict: What’s helpful and what’s not for low-income adolescents. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 18(2), 192–202. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-008-9219-9.CrossRef
Diemer, M. A., Mistry, R. S., Wadsworth, M. E., López, I., & Reimers, F. (2013). Best practices in conceptualizing and measuring social class in psychological research. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 13(1), 77–113. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12001.CrossRef
Duran, C. A. K., Cottone, E., Ruzek, E. A., Mashburn, A. J., & Grissmer, D. W. (2020). Family stress processes and children’s self‐regulation. Child Development, 91(2), 577–595. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13202.CrossRefPubMed
Feldstein Ewing, S. W., Chang, L., Cottler, L. B., Tapert, S. F., Dowling, G. J., & Brown, S. A. (2018). Approaching retention within the ABCD study. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 32, 130–137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.11.004.CrossRefPubMed
Fosco, G. M., Caruthers, A. S., & Dishion, T. J. (2012). A six-year predictive test of adolescent family relationship quality and effortful control pathways to emerging adult social and emotional health. Journal of Family Psychology, 26(4), 565–575. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028873.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
French, D., & Vigne, S. (2019). The causes and consequences of household financial strain: A systematic review. International Review of Financial Analysis, 62, 150–156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2018.09.008.CrossRef
Garavan, H., Bartsch, H., Conway, K., Decastro, A., Goldstein, R. Z., Heeringa, S., Jernigan, T., Potter, A., Thompson, W., & Zahs, D. (2018). Recruiting the ABCD sample: Design considerations and procedures. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 32, 16–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2018.04.004.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
Gauthier, A. H., & Furstenberg, F. F. (2010). The experience of financial strain among families with children in the United States. (Working paper no. WP-10-17). National Center for Family and Marriage Research.
Gennetian, L. A., Duncan, G., Fox, N. A., Magnuson, K., Halpern-Meekin, S., Noble, K. G., & Yoshikawa, H. (2022). Unconditional cash and family investments in infants: evidence from a large-scale cash transfer experiment in the US (No. w30379). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Gibbons, R.A., Sprong, S. & Chzhen,Y. Growing Up in the Great Recession: The Effects of Three Dimensions of Economic Well-being on Child Behavioral Difficulties from Ages 3 to 17. JYouth Adolescence 52, 1024–1038 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01721-2
Goodman, E., Amick, B. C., Rezendes, M. O., Levine, S., Kagan, J., Rogers, W. H., & Tarlov, A. R. (2000). Adolescents’ understanding of social class: A comparison of white upper middle class and working class youth. Journal of Adolescent Health, 27(2), 80–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1054-139X(99)00116-0.CrossRef
Gutman, L. M., & Codiroli McMaster, N. (2020). Gendered pathways of internalizing problems from early childhood to adolescence and associated adolescent outcomes. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 48(5), 703–718. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-020-00623-w.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
Hayes, A. (2017). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. (Guilford Publications.
Hoffman, E. A., LeBlanc, K., Weiss, S. R. B., & Dowling, G. J. (2022). Transforming the future of adolescent health: Opportunities from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Journal of Adolescent Health, 70(2), 186–188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.11.008.CrossRef
Holtzman, R. J., & Roberts, M. C. (2012). The role of family conflict in the relation between exposure to community violence and depressive symptoms. Journal of Community Psychology, 40(2), 264–275. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20511.CrossRef
Humphreys, K. L., Schouboe, S. N. F., Kircanski, K., Leibenluft, E., Stringaris, A., & Gotlib, I. H. (2019). Irritability, externalizing, and internalizing psychopathology in adolescence: Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations and moderation by sex. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 48(5), 781–789. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2018.1460847.CrossRef
Kalil, A., Mayer, S., & Shah, R. (2020). Impact of the COVID-19 crisis on family dynamics in economically vulnerable households. University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper, (2020-143).
Landers‐Potts, M. A., Wickrama, K. A. S., Simons, L. G., Cutrona, C., Gibbons, F. X., Simons, R. L., & Conger, R. (2015). An extension and moderational analysis of the family stress model focusing on African American adolescents. Family Relations, 64(2), 233–248. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12117.CrossRef
Le, Y., Mogle, J. A., & Feinberg, M. E. (2023). Trajectories of parent and child well‐being across the pandemic year: Role of financial strain, social distancing, and COVID ‐19 prevalence. Family Process, 62(3), 1134–1146. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12823.CrossRefPubMed
Lee, C.-Y. S., Lee, J., & August, G. J. (2011). Financial stress, parental depressive symptoms, parenting practices, and children’s externalizing problem behaviors: Underlying processes. Family Relations, 60(4), 476–490. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2011.00656.x.CrossRef
Lee, T. K., Wickrama, K. A. S., & Simons, L. G. (2013). Chronic family economic hardship, family processes and progression of mental and physical health symptoms in adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42(6), 821–836. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-012-9808-1.CrossRefPubMed
Li, X., Lam, C. B., & Chung, K. K. H. (2025). The longitudinal association of family stress with child adjustment: Mother–child and father–child conflict as simultaneous mediators. Early Childhood Education Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-024-01834-2.
Lucero, J. L., Lim, S., & Santiago, A. M. (2016). Changes in economic hardship and intimate partner violence: A family stress framework. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 37(3), 395–406. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-016-9488-1.CrossRef
May, E. M., Azar, S. T., & Matthews, S. A. (2018). How does the neighborhood “come through the door?”: Concentrated disadvantage, residential instability, and the home environment for preschoolers. American Journal of Community Psychology, 61(1–2), 218–228. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12223.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
Mistry, R. S., Brown, C. S., White, E. S., Chow, K. A., & Gillen‐O’Neel, C. (2015). Elementary school children’s reasoning about social class: A mixed‐methods study. Child Development, 86(5), 1653–1671. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12407.CrossRefPubMed
Mistry, R. S., & Elenbaas, L. (2021). It’s all in the family: Parents’ economic worries and youth’s perceptions of financial stress and educational outcomes. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 50(4), 724–738. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01393-4.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
Moffitt, T. E., & Caspi, A. (2001). Childhood predictors differentiate life-course persistent and adolescence-limited antisocialpathways among males and females. Development and Psychopathology, 13(2), 355–375. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579401002097.CrossRefPubMed
Moos, R. H., & Moos, B. S. (1976). A typology of family social environments. Family Process, 15(4), 357–371.PubMedCrossRef
Morelli, N. M., Hong, K., Elzie, X., Garcia, J., Evans, M. C., Duong, J., & Villodas, M. T. (2022). Bidirectional associations between family conflict and child behavior problems in families at risk for maltreatment. Child Abuse & Neglect, 133, 105832 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2022.105832.CrossRef
Morelli, N. M., Hong, K., Garcia, J., Elzie, X., Alvarez, A., & Villodas, M. T. (2023). Everyday conflict in families at risk for violence exposure: Examining unique, bidirectional associations with children’s znxious- and withdrawn-depressed symptoms. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 51(3), 317–330. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-022-00966-6.CrossRefPubMed
Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. (2017). Mplus user guide. 8th ed. Muthén & Muthén.
Paat, Y.-F. (2011). The link between financial strain, interparental discord and children’s antisocial behaviors. Journal of Family Violence, 26(3), 195–210. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-010-9354-0.CrossRef
Ringoot, A. P., Tiemeier, H., Jaddoe, V. W. V., So, P., Hofman, A., Verhulst, F. C., & Jansen, P. W. (2015). Parental depression and child well-being: Young children’s self-reports helped addressing biases in parent reports. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 68(8), 928–938. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2015.03.009.CrossRefPubMed
Schenck-Fontaine, A., & Panico, L. (2019). Many kinds of poverty: Three dimensions of economic hardship, their combinations, and children’s behavior problems. Demography, 56(6), 2279–2305. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00833-y.CrossRefPubMed
Schmiedeberg, C., & Bozoyan, C. (2021). Do economic hardship and pressure really influence parenting? European Sociological Review, 37(2), 287–304. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaa051.CrossRef
Schneider, D., & Harknett, K. (2022). Maternal exposure to work schedule unpredictability and child behavior. Journal of Marriage and Family, 84(1), 187–209. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12800.CrossRefPubMed
Skeer, M. R., McCormick, M. C., Normand, S.-L. T., Mimiaga, M. J., Buka, S. L., & Gilman, S. E. (2011). Gender differences in the association between family conflict and adolescent substance use disorders. Journal of Adolescent Health, 49(2), 187–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2010.12.003.CrossRef
Steinberg, L. (2001). We know some things: Parent–adolescent relationships in retrospect and prospect. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 11(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/1532-7795.00001.CrossRef
Wadsworth, M. E., & Compas, B. E. (2002). Coping with family conflict and economic strain: The adolescent perspective. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 12(2), 243–274. https://doi.org/10.1111/1532-7795.00033.CrossRef
Wang, Z., Li, C., & Ai, K. (2022). Family economic strain and adolescent aggression during the COVID-19 pandemic: Roles of interparental conflict and parent–child conflict. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 17(4), 2369–2385. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-022-10042-2.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
Wodtke, G. T., Elwert, F., & Harding, D. J. (2016). Neighborhood effect heterogeneity by family income and developmental period. American Journal of Sociology, 121(4), 1168–1222. https://doi.org/10.1086/684137.CrossRef
Xerxa, Y., Rescorla, L. A., Serdarevic, F., Van IJzendorn, M. H., Jaddoe, V. W., Verhulst, F. C., Luijk, M. P. C. M., & Tiemeier, H. (2020). The complex role of parental separation in the association between family conflict and child problem behavior. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 49(1), 79–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2018.1520118.CrossRef
Yoo, N. & Jang, S. H. (2023). Perceived household financial declineand physical/mental health among adolescents during the COVID-19 crisis: Focusing on gender differences. Prev Med Rep, 32, 102119PubMedPubMedCentralCrossRef
