Income is Not Enough: Incorporating Material Hardship into Models of Income Associations with Parenting and Child Development

Overview

Journal Child Dev

Specialty Pediatrics

Date 2007 Mar 3

PMID 17328694

Citations 210

Authors

Elizabeth T Gershoff

J Lawrence Aber

C Cybele Raver

Mary Clare Lennon

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Although research has clearly established that low family income has negative impacts on children's cognitive skills and social-emotional competence, less often is a family's experience of material hardship considered. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (N=21,255), this study examined dual components of family income and material hardship along with parent mediators of stress, positive parenting, and investment as predictors of 6-year-old children's cognitive skills and social-emotional competence. Support was found for a model that identified unique parent-mediated paths from income to cognitive skills and from income and material hardship to social-emotional competence. The findings have implications for future study of family income and child development and for identification of promising targets for policy intervention.

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