Socioeconomic status, parental investments, and the cognitive and behavioral outcomes of low-income children from immigrant and native households

The current study examines the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on preschool children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes and if these relations are mediated by the quality of children's home environment and moderated by family nativity status. Data come from 1459 low-income families (n = 257 and 1202 immigrant and native families, respectively). Results indicated that among both immigrant and native households, maternal education, as compared to household income or welfare receipt, was the strongest predictor of a composite of SES. Path analyses estimated direct and indirect effects of SES and revealed greater similarity than difference in the processes by which SES influences immigrant and native children's preschool outcomes. Language/literacy stimulation and maternal supportiveness mediated the relations of SES to children's cognitive outcomes among both immigrant and native families. In contrast, parenting stress mediated the effects of SES on children's aggressive behavior among native, but not immigrant, households.

[1]  Frederick J. Morrison,et al.  A mediational model of the association between socioeconomic status and three-year-old language abilities: The role of parenting factors , 2004 .

[2]  N. Bayley.  Bayley Scales of Infant Development , 1999 .

[3]  Robert Crosnoe,et al.  Double Disadvantage or Signs of Resilience? The Elementary School Contexts of Children From Mexican Immigrant Families , 2005 .

[4]  Min Zhou.  Urban Education: Challenges in Educating Culturally Diverse Children. , 2003 .

[5]  J. Brooks-Gunn,et al.  Family processes as pathways from income to young children's development. , 2002, Developmental psychology.

[6]  S. West,et al.  Within-Subject and Longitudinal Experiments: Design and Analysis Issues. , 2004 .

[7]  C. Edelbrock,et al.  Empirically based assessment of the behavioral/emotional problems of 2- and 3- year-old children , 1987, Journal of abnormal child psychology.

[8]  D. Orthner,et al.  Welfare reform and high school dropout patterns for children , 1999 .

[9]  J. Singer,et al.  Maternal correlates of growth in toddler vocabulary production in low-income families. , 2005, Child development.

[10]  P. Rousseeuw,et al.  Wiley Series in Probability and Mathematical Statistics , 2005 .

[11]  M. Donnellan,et al.  An interactionist perspective on the socioeconomic context of human development. , 2007, Annual review of psychology.

[12]  Catherine S Tamis-LeMonda,et al.  Mother-child bookreading in low-income families: correlates and outcomes during the first three years of life. , 2006, Child development.

[13]  R. Takanishi.  Leveling the Playing Field: Supporting Immigrant Children from Birth to Eight. , 2004 .

[14]  J. Brooks-Gunn,et al.  Parental interactions with Latino infants: variation by country of origin and English proficiency. , 2006, Child development.

[15]  B. Wolfe,et al.  The Determinants of Children's Attainments: A Review of Methods and Findings , 1995 .

[16]  Goslin,et al.  Handbook of socialization theory and research , 1969 .

[17]  Rashmita S. Mistry,et al.  Family income and its relation to preschool children's adjustment for families in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. , 2004, Developmental psychology.

[18]  Rashmita S. Mistry,et al.  Economic well-being and children's social adjustment: the role of family process in an ethnically diverse low-income sample. , 2002, Child development.

[19]  R. R. Abidin.  Parenting Stress Index: Professional Manual . Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources , 1995 .

[20]  E. Gershoff,et al.  Income is not enough: incorporating material hardship into models of income associations with parenting and child development. , 2007, Child development.

[21]  Keith F Widaman,et al.  Economic stress, parenting, and child adjustment in Mexican American and European American families. , 2004, Child development.

[22]  Robert Crosnoe.  Early Child Care and the School Readiness of Children from Mexican Immigrant Families 1 , 2007 .

[23]  J. Brooks-Gunn,et al.  Transitions on and off AFDC: implications for parenting and children's cognitive development. , 2001, Child development.

[24]  U. Bronfenbrenner.  Contexts of child rearing: Problems and prospects. , 1979 .

[25]  C. Ayoub,et al.  Parenting Stress of Low-Income Parents of Toddlers and Preschoolers: Psychometric Properties of a Short Form of the Parenting Stress Index , 2007 .

[26]  D. Phillips,et al.  From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development , 2000 .

[27]  B. Hart,et al.  American Parenting of Language-Learning Children: Persisting Differences in Family-Child Interactions Observed in Natural Home Environments. , 1992 .

[28]  L. Bank,et al.  Method variance in structural equation modeling: Living with "glop" , 1990 .

[29]  H. McAdoo,et al.  An integrative model for the study of developmental competencies in minority children. , 1996, Child development.

[30]  V. Mcloyd,et al.  Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development. , 1998, The American psychologist.

[31]  R. Hauser,et al.  Measuring socioeconomic status in studies of child development. , 1994, Child development.

[32]  James L. Arbuckle,et al.  Full Information Estimation in the Presence of Incomplete Data , 1996 .

[33]  M. Bornstein,et al.  Socioeconomic Status, Parenting, and Child Development , 2003 .

[34]  C. Coll,et al.  The Multiple Contexts of Middle Childhood. , 2004 .

[35]  Annette Lareau.  Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life , 2003 .

[36]  R. Lennox,et al.  Conventional wisdom on measurement: A structural equation perspective. , 1991 .

[37]  Greg J. Duncan,et al.  How much does childhood poverty affect the life chances of children , 1998 .

[38]  M. Bornstein,et al.  Socioeconomic status, parenting, and child development: The Hollingshead Four-Factor Index of Social Status and The Socioeconomic Index of Occupations. , 2003 .

[39]  Richard G. Lambert,et al.  A model of home learning environment and social risk factors in relation to children's emergent literacy and social outcomes , 2005 .

[40]  J. Heckman.  Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children , 2006, Science.

[41]  Glen H. Elder,et al.  Families in Troubled Times: Adapting to Change in Rural America. Rand D. Conger and Glen H. Elder. , 1995, The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare.

[42]  A. Fuligni.  The academic achievement of adolescents from immigrant families: the roles of family background, attitudes, and behavior. , 1997, Child development.

[43]  R. Bradley,et al.  Socioeconomic status and child development. , 2002, Annual review of psychology.

[44]  I. Sigel,et al.  HANDBOOK OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY , 2006 .

[45]  S. Holt.  The Earned Income Tax Credit at Age 30: What We Know , 2006 .

[46]  E. Hoff.  The specificity of environmental influence: socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech. , 2003, Child development.

[47]  K. Ann Renninger,et al.  Handbook Of Child Psychology: Child Psychology In Practice , 1998 .

[48]  V. Mcloyd,et al.  The impact of economic hardship on black families and children: psychological distress, parenting, and socioemotional development. , 1990, Child development.

[49]  K. Mccartney,et al.  Change in family income-to-needs matters more for children with less. , 2001, Child development.

[50]  Jeanne Brooks-Gunn,et al.  How money matters for young children's development: parental investment and family processes. , 2002, Child development.

[51]  Amaury Nora,et al.  Path Analysis: An Introduction and Analysis of a Decade of Research , 2004 .

[52]  R. Conger,et al.  Social Class and Socialization in Families. , 2007 .

[53]  Ruth K. Chao,et al.  Race, ethnicity, and culture in child development: contemporary research and future directions. , 2006, Child development.

[54]  C. Ross,et al.  Dividing work, sharing work, and in-between: marriage patterns and depression. , 1983, American sociological review.

[55]  Bonnie Knoke,et al.  Chronicity of Maternal Depressive Symptoms, Maternal Behavior, and Child Functioning at 36 Months: Result from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care , 1999 .

[56]  Allison Sidle Fuligni,et al.  The Infant-Toddler HOME in the 2nd and 3rd Years of Life , 2004 .

[57]  Pamela Morris,et al.  Identifying the Effects of Income on Children's Development Using Experimental Data , 2003 .

[58]  A. T. Panter,et al.  The SAGE andbook of methods in social psychology , 2004 .

[59]  Kenneth I. Wolpin,et al.  Are There Increasing Returns to the Intergenerational Production of Human Capital? Maternal Schooling and Child Intellectual Achievement , 1994 .

[60]  V. Mcloyd,et al.  Childhood Poverty, Policy, and Practice , 2007 .

[61]  K. Bollen.  Multiple indicators: Internal consistency or no necessary relationship? , 1984 .

[62]  G. Evans.  The environment of childhood poverty. , 2004, The American psychologist.

[63]  Peter D. Brandon,et al.  The Child Care Arrangements of Preschool‐Age Children in Immigrant Families in the United States , 2004 .

[64]  G. Brody,et al.  Economic pressure in African American families: a replication and extension of the family stress model. , 2002, Developmental psychology.

[65]  G. Becker.  A Treatise on the Family , 1982 .

[66]  D. J. Hernandez,et al.  Demographic Change and the Life Circumstances of Immigrant Families , 2004 .

[67]  J. Brooks-Gunn,et al.  Immigrant differences in school-age children's verbal trajectories: a look at four racial/ethnic groups. , 2006, Child development.

[68]  Wen-Jui Han.  Academic Achievements of Children in Immigrant Families , 2006 .

[69]  G. Patterson.  Depression and Aggression in Family interaction , 1994 .

[70]  G. Duncan,et al.  Extent and consequences of welfare dependence among America's children , 1995 .

[71]  S. Strand,et al.  English language acquisition and educational attainment at the end of primary school , 2005 .

[72]  U. Bronfenbrenner,et al.  The ecology of developmental processes. , 1998 .

[73]  G. A. Marcoulides,et al.  Advanced structural equation modeling : issues and techniques , 1996 .

[74]  R. Hauser.  Disaggregating a social-psychological model of educational attainment , 1972 .

[75]  N. Astone,et al.  Some Practical Guidelines for Measuring Youth's Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status , 1994 .

[76]  T. Achenbach.  Manual for the child behavior checklist/4-18 and 1991 profile , 1991 .

[77]  G. Duncan,et al.  Does neighborhood and family poverty affect mothers' parenting, mental health, and social support? , 1994 .

[78]  K. Magnuson,et al.  Off with Hollingshead: Socioeconomic resources, parenting, and child development. , 2003 .

[79]  A. Kalil,et al.  Does welfare affect family processes and adolescent adjustment? , 1998, Child development.

[80]  H. Yoshikawa,et al.  Socioeconomic resources, parenting, and child development among immigrant families , 2003 .

[81]  Katherine A. Magnuson,et al.  Preschool and School Readiness of Children of Immigrants , 2006 .

[82]  A. Goldberger,et al.  Structural Equation Models in the Social Sciences. , 1974 .

[83]  M. Bornstein,et al.  Early cognitive development and parental education , 1999 .

[84]  Robert H. Bradley,et al.  Home observation for measurement of the environment , 1979 .