Article citation

1
Article citation

• National Institute of Child Health and Human
  Development Early Child Care Research Network.
  Duration and Developmental Timing of Poverty and
  Childrens Cognitive and Social Development From
  Birth Through Third Grade. Child Development, 76,
  795-810.

2
Purpose

• This study seeks to better understand how the
  dynamics of poverty influence cognitive
  development. In particular, its looking at how
  the duration of poverty and its occurrence in
  relation to developmental stage may impact a
  child.

3
Goals of study

• To look at the way poverty influences development
  in greater depth, by examining how the timing and
  duration of a familys poverty impacts a child.
  
• To shed light on the parents role in the
  mediation of poverty. How might poverty be
  experienced differently according to household
  conditions and parenting characteristics?

4
Research questions

• Are duration and timing of poverty associated
  with variations in home enrichment or parenting
  quality over time? Are these relations explained
  by family and maternal characteristics?
• Do duration and developmental timing of poverty
  predict variations in childrens
  cognitive/language and socioemotional development
  once family characteristics are controlled? Do
  experiences in the home and child care settings
  mediate relations of poverty to childrens
  development?

5
Background

• Poverty is one of the most significant risk
  factors in child development. Chronic poverty is
  a consistent disadvantage when compared with
  transitory poverty. But what about the nuances
  found in the experiences of many children?

6
Background

• Some studies have looked more closely at how the
  timing and duration of poverty may affect
  children in different ways. One of these found
  that children exposed to poverty at the age of
  11, even if for the first time, were impacted as
  much as children who had been poor all their
  lives (Ackerman, Brown, Izard, 2004).

7
Background

• Another study attributed income-related
  differences in cognitive development to the
  effect of poverty on parenting skills.
  Lower-income parents, it concluded, were more
  likely to have been exposed to negative life
  events and psychological distress. They were
  therefore more likely to turn to punitive or
  coercive parenting styles that discouraged
  cognitive growth (McLoyd, 1997, 1998).

8
Background

• The home environments of families living in
  chronic poverty are less stimulating in terms of
  cognitive development than those of families
  living in transitory poverty. Also, chronically
  poor parents have been shown to be more
  profoundly stressed by their living conditions
  than those whose poverty is temporary (Linver,
  Brooks-Gunn, Kohen, 2002) .

9
Study sample

• The researchers used data from the National
  Institute of Child Health and Human Development
  Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development
  (NICHD SEC-CYD), a longitudinal study which
  tracked participants from birth to 9 years
  (1991-2000).
• The sample was composed of 1,364 families in 10
  locations across the country, both large
  metropolitan areas and small towns. 24 of the
  children tracked were minorities. 11 of the
  mothers tracked had not completed high school
  14 were single parents.

10
Income levels in the sample

• 63 of the families surveyed were classified as
  never poor over the entire span of the study.
  
• 9 were classified as poor early (birth-3
  years)
  
• 5 as poor late (4-9 years)
• 23 as chronically poor

11
Data collection methods

• Interviews with mothers when child was 1 month
  old.
  
• Home and family environment assessment at 6, 15,
  24, 36, and 54 months old using the Home
  Observation for the Measure of the Environment
  (HOME).
• Yearly assessments of child care environments
  before children entered school using the
  Observational Record of the Caregiving
  Environment (ORCE).
• Cognitive and language development assessments at
  24, 36, and 54 months using Bayley, Bracken, and
  Reynell scales.

12
Data collection methods

• Mothers and teachers provided information on
  behavior problems at the five assessment points
  using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL).
  
• Maternal depressive symptoms measured
  periodically using the Center for Epidemiological
  Studies-Depression Scale (CES-DS).
  
• Mother-child interactions videotaped activities
  recorded ranged from free play at 6 months to a
  structured three-boxes task at other assessment
  points.

13
Results

• Developmental timing of poverty had less of an
  impact on cognitive development than the overall
  duration of poverty.
  
• Parenting quality, as shown through home
  enrichment and maternal sensitivity, was shown to
  mediate between a childs cognitive development
  and the experience of poverty.
• Child care played a diminished role in the
  studys outcomes. Even lower quality child care
  was not shown to have a significant effect. The
  researchers suggest that this is perhaps because
  the chronically poor children covered by the
  survey spent less time in nonmaternal care than
  children in other income groups.

14
Results

• Families that experienced transitory poverty were
  able to maintain a higher level of childrearing
  quality than those that were classified as
  chronically poor. Even when their incomes were
  low, these parents showed sensitivity rates that
  were similar to what was found in never-poor
  families.
• Behavior problems among never-poor children
  peaked in the preschool years and then began to
  decline for always-poor children, behavior
  problems increased as school age was approached.
  This issue was more closely linked to aspects
  such as maternal education, as well as the
  presence of a partner in the house as children
  grew older, than poverty.

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Implications

• Factors that accompany poverty and tend to
  contribute to lower cognitive performance are
  multiple, making the effects of this experience
  even more entrenched.
• Early poverty was not shown to be more damaging
  than late poverty. In fact, a higher occurrence
  of behavior problems was noted among late-poor
  children. What does this mean for elementary
  educators?

16
Critique

• Sample size of families who experienced
  transitory poverty was low. It was therefore
  difficult to make solid distinctions between
  early- and late-poor groups.
• The NICHD SECC does not adequately examine ethnic
  differences within income groups. This is in
  part attributed to the locations chosen for
  study.
• The data that the study is based on wasnt
  gathered with income-related research in mind.