During emerging adulthood, most youth receive family support to help them weather the difficulties associated with transitioning to independence. When foster youth emancipate, they confront the challenges associated with emerging adulthood, and are at risk of having to transition without family support. Many are in danger of failing to meet minimal levels of self-sufficiency. A caring adult who offers social support is normative for adolescent development and protective for youth across many risk conditions. Natural mentoring can cultivate such relationships. This study examines the association between natural mentor relationship characteristics, and material hardship and asset-related outcomes during the emerging adulthood period in both a normative sample of young adults and young adults identified as former foster youth. This study also considers the potential mediating effect of future expectations. Data from Wave 3 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health that pertain to 15,197 respondents are used. Path models with categorical dependent variables were estimated using a Maximum Likelihood method with standard errors that are robust to non-normality and non-independence of observations. “Like a parent,” “role model,” and “guidance/advice” were significantly associated with assets among both groups. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on natural mentoring and former foster youth, and highlights the value of increasing our understanding of natural mentor roles for intervention development. The focus on assets-related outcomes is a novel approach to investigating the benefits of natural mentoring to the healthy development of youth. This paper is the first to consider the association between natural mentoring and assets building among both former and nonformer foster youth.

Researchers analyzed the 2002 wave of the National Survey of America's Families, conducted by the Urban Institute and Child Trends, and examined material hardship in families raising children with disabilities. Measures of hardship included food insecurity, housing instability, health care access, and telephone disconnection. The research indicated that families of children with disabilities experienced significantly greater hardship than did other families. As family income rose above the federal poverty level, hardship declined sharply for families of children without disabilities but not for families raising children with disabilities. Thus, the U.S. federal poverty level was found to be a particularly poor predictor of hardship for families raising children with disabilities. Finally, among families of children with disabilities, single-mother and cohabiting-partner families particularly were at risk for experiencing severe hardship. This article also discusses policy and advocacy implications.

Most research on homeownership is conducted on nationally representative samples of homeowners and fails to isolate the unique experience of low-and moderate-income (LMI) homeowners. Given the interest of policymakers in promoting homeownership among LMI households over the past 20 years, along with the apparent role played by risky borrowers-many of whom are low-income-in the current housing market crisis, it is important to evaluate both economic and social outcomes for this subgroup of homeowners. Using a matched set of LMI owners and renters in the 2007 Community Advantage Program (CAP) panel, we assess the effect of homeownership on neighborhood satisfaction. By including various individual and neighborhood characteristics as covariates, we employ multilevel modeling and propensity score matching to address the nested structure of the data and endogeneity issues. Findings indicate that homeownership is an important predictor of neighborhood satisfaction among LMI households, even when controlling for a host of socioeconomic, demographic, and neighborhood characteristics. This may suggest that homeownership can serve as a viable way to improve neighborhood satisfaction among LMI households. This is important as neighborhood satisfaction is highly associated with overall quality of life.

This study examines whether participation in Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) leads to a significant growth in assets beyond saving in the IDA accounts. Using a longitudinal experimental research design for low-income IDA participants, we test for impacts on five measures of assets: liquid assets, other financial assets, total financial assets, real assets, and total assets. Results show that, while there are no large differences in liquid and financial assets between the treatment group and the control group, IDA participants in the take-up group have more real assets and total assets than members of the control group. Results suggest that additional research to examine long-term effects of IDAs on asset growth may be fruitful.

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