Dynamic Models of Poverty and Psychosocial Adjustment through Childhood

Children exhibit significant variability in their poverty experiences and well-being through time, longitudinal realities that complicate the study of economic deprivation and adjustment in the early life course. Drawing on thirteen years of data from the Children of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data set, we examine how children's poverty histories predict latent growth curves of their psychosocial adjustment using multiply imputed data sets. The duration of poverty between birth and 1986 predicts the level of antisocial behavior and anxiety-depression in 1986, while the proportion of time spent in poverty between 1986 and 1992 predicts the rate increase in antisocial behavior between 1986 and 1992. Controlling the duration of poverty, we find that transitions into poverty between birth and 1986 predict the rate of increase in anxiety-depression between 1986 and 1992 among boys. Hispanic boys seem especially vulnerable to early poverty experiences: transitions into poverty between birth and 1986 raise their 1986 level of antisocial behavior, while the duration of poverty between birth and 1986 sharpens their rate of increase in anxiety-depression between 1986 and 1992. These findings underscore the value of a life-history approach to children's family experiences and well-being. INTRODUCTION Nearly one-quarter of American children today are poor, a figure that is both higher than at any time since the mid-1960s (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1996) and likely to increase substantially with welfare reform (The Urban Institute 1996). In turn, many studies provide evidence that poverty is detrimental to the well-being of children, predicting decrements in cognitive ability However, excepting relationships involving cognitive ability and educational attainment, most of these observed effects have been small in magnitude (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn 1997, pp. 597-601; McLoyd 1998). Yet there are many difficulties associated with the accurate assessment of how poverty affects children. First, children's poverty experiences are often highly complex across the early life course. While approximately 4 in 10 American children experience poverty before age 16, most poverty is episodic and short-lived (observe that almost half of the children in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with complete income data experience multiple, brief episodes of poverty, while persistent poverty is relatively uncommon. Despite these highly variable experiences, most studies of poverty and children's well-being are based on cross-sectional comparisons between impoverished and nonimpoverished children (Walker 1994), an analytic strategy that is likely to misrepresent the lived experiences of children who are ever poor. Second, virtually all previous research …