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Author: Albers, Alison Burke
Resulting in 2 citations.
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Albers, Alison Burke |
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Poverty, Social Context and Children's Mental Health Across the Early Life Course Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Virginia, 2001. Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); CESD (Depression Scale); Children, Poverty; Life Course; Parenting Skills/Styles; Peers/Peer influence/Peer relations; Poverty The purpose of this study was to provide a better understanding of the processes that explain the relation between long-term poverty and mental health among early adolescents. Combining Elder's life-span principles, Bronfenbrenner's ecological model and Coleman's theory of social capital, an analytical model of how poverty influences children's mental health was proposed. Each chapter provided an analysis that included the same set of measures in ordinary least square (OLS) regression models predicting outcomes outlined in the heuristic model. New to work in this area is the use of a change model approach. This allowed for the examination of the influence of poverty, its temporal conditions and family structure on change in children's mental health as measured by internalizing, externalizing and depressive symptoms. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), I found that economic deprivation was associated with maternal psychological distress, neighborhood disorder, residential instability, and peer pressure. For the most part, longitudinal poverty and income did not have particularly strong or consistently negative effects on parenting practices. In the full models, the income and poverty measures generally were not predictive of the mental health outcomes. However, current debt had a significant main effect on externalizing symptoms for females. In sum, the final analyses identified significant contributors to mental health for boys and girls during early adolescence. Female adolescents were particularly vulnerable to the effects of parenting practices and neighborhood disorder, whereas male adolescents were susceptible to peer pressure and family disruption. Maternal education significantly contributed to psychological functioning of both poor boys and girls. The results support the notion that income's correlates, such as maternal education, neighborhood disorder, and punitive parenting, have true effects on children's mental health . In general, the merging of developmentally sensitive concepts with the study of poverty and children's mental health offers promise for a better understanding of the features that produce poor mental health outcomes among children and adolescents. |
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Bibliography Citation
Albers, Alison Burke. Poverty, Social Context and Children's Mental Health Across the Early Life Course. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Virginia, 2001.. |
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Albers, Alison Burke |
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Poverty, Social Mediators, and Early Adolescents' Mental Health Presented: Anaheim, CA, American Sociological Association Annual Meetings, August 2001 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: American Sociological Association Keyword(s): Adolescent Behavior; Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Bias Decomposition; Child Self-Administered Supplement (CSAS); Children; Family Characteristics; Family Income; Gender; Health, Mental/Psychological; Household Composition; Neighborhood Effects; Parenting Skills/Styles; Peers/Peer influence/Peer relations; Poverty Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. The literature on income's effects on children and adolescents far outpaces current knowledge about the potential ways in which income and its correlates actually operate. Drawing on twelve years of data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY) data set, this paper examines how longitudinal patterns of poverty experiences predict children's mental health during early adolescence with a focus on social mediators -- namely family and peers. The analyses draw on two assessments of mental health across the transition from late childhood (10 and 11 years old) to early adolescence (12 and 13 old). The long-term income and poverty measures generally were not associated with externalizing and internalizing symptoms for both boys and girls within the context of the change model. Yet, current economic stress significantly predicted externalizing symptoms for girls. For boys, family disruption, maternal negativity and peer pressure contributed to externalizing symptoms throughout all the models. For girls, neighborhood disorder and parenting practices contributed to levels of internalizing symptoms. These findings underscore the value of identifying the features that produce mental health outcomes among early adolescents, and the processes through which the effects occur. |
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Bibliography Citation
Albers, Alison Burke. "Poverty, Social Mediators, and Early Adolescents' Mental Health." Presented: Anaheim, CA, American Sociological Association Annual Meetings, August 2001. |