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Title: Economic Hardship and the Development of Five- and Six-Year-Olds: Neighborhood and Regional Perspectives
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Chase-Lansdale, P. Lindsay
Gordon, Rachel A.
Economic Hardship and the Development of Five- and Six-Year-Olds: Neighborhood and Regional Perspectives
Child Development 67,6 (December 1996): 3338-3367.
Also: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1996.tb01917.x/abstract
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing, Inc. => Wiley Online
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Child Development; Childhood Education, Early; Children, School-Age; Cognitive Development; Education; Ethnic Studies; Family Influences; Geocoded Data; Income; Neighborhood Effects; Occupations; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Racial Differences; Racial Studies; Regions; Socioeconomic Factors; Socioeconomic Status (SES)

The present study examines the association between neighborhood characteristics and the development of 5- and 6-year-olds. We also explore how region might moderate the effects of neighborhoods on children, thus considering both larger (regional) and smaller (community) contexts of families. We find that structural aspects of the neighborhood at the census tract level are associated with child development in the early school-age period. For the sample as a whole neighborhood factors play a role in both cognitive and socioemotional outcomes, even when family factors are controlled. Yet only modest support for neighborhood influences on child development is evident in our main effects models. It appears that neighborhood influences on child development are underestimated or masked unless the associations are examined separately by two areas of the United States: the Midwest and Northeast versus the South and West. Significant associations between neighborhood variables and children's development are seen in the Northeastern and Midwestern regions, but less so in the Southern and Western regions of the United States. Greater economic and social resources as measured by average neighborhood SES (income, education, occupation) and greater ethnic congruity as measured by more neighbors of the same racial heritage as the child are related to higher cognitive functioning, but only in the Northeast and Midwest. Furthermore, children in these regions show more competent behavioral functioning when the relative presence of adults to children in the neighborhood is higher. In these regions, African-American but not white children show higher levels of behavior problems when community male joblessness rates are higher. We speculate about processes that might underlie these neighborhood and regional effects and point to directions for further research. (Copyright 1996 by the Society for Research in Child Development. All rights reserved.)
Bibliography Citation
Chase-Lansdale, P. Lindsay and Rachel A. Gordon. "Economic Hardship and the Development of Five- and Six-Year-Olds: Neighborhood and Regional Perspectives." Child Development 67,6 (December 1996): 3338-3367.