Family poverty and neighborhood poverty: Links with children's school readiness before and after the Great Recession

Abstract

This paper examines how neighborhood and family poverty predict children’s academic skills and classroom behavior at school entry, and whether associations have changed over a period of twelve years spanning the Great Recession. Utilizing the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten 1998 and 2010 cohorts and combined with data from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey, we find that the proportion of kindergarten children living in moderate and high poverty neighborhoods increased from 1998 to 2010, and that these increases were most pronounced for non-poor and white children. Using OLS and fixed effects regression analyses and holding family poverty constant, we find that children in neighborhoods with higher levels of poverty start school less ready to learn than their peers. Specifically, children from the highest poverty neighborhoods start school almost a year behind children from the lowest poverty neighborhoods in terms of their academic skills. In addition, we find that the academic skills gap between poor- and non-poor children within neighborhood poverty categories grew from 1998 to 2010, particularly in high poverty neighborhoods. These findings appear to be explained both by changes in the composition of families within neighborhood poverty categories and income increases among non-poor families. The findings indicate that neighborhood poverty may be a useful proxy to identify children and families in need of additional support.

Neighborhood Poverty and Children's Academic Skills and Behavior in Early Elementary School

“…Using the census tracts in which children's homes are located during the fall of kindergarten, we merged the child‐level data with tract‐level information on poverty rates that was collected from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2008–2012 American Community Survey 5‐year estimates. Census data have limitations but are generally accepted as the only comprehensive source of detailed geographic information, and using the percent of households or residents below the federal poverty line is a common approach to assessing neighborhoods (Bishaw, ; Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon‐Rowley, ; Wolf et al, ). These multiyear data offer the advantage of increased statistical reliability for less populated areas and small population subgroups, and it is the only source for poverty rates at the tract level.…”

“…Indeed, a growing body of research finds that growing up in neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage affects the educational outcomes of the children growing up in such environments above and beyond their own household disadvantage (Alexander, Entwisle, & Olson, ; Chetty & Hendren, ; Chetty, Hendren, & Katz, ; Roy, Mccoy, & Raver, ; Wolf et al, ). In general, among young children, the presence of affluent neighborhoods has been found to be associated with more positive cognitive development (Chase‐Lansdale, Gordon, Brooks‐Gunn, & Klebenov, ).…”

“…To date, one study has examined descriptive associations between neighborhood poverty and children's academic skills and behavior at kindergarten entry. Using both the 1998 and 2010 cohorts of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS‐K), Wolf et al () found that children in the highest poverty areas started school nearly a year behind children in the lowest poverty neighborhoods. The authors controlled for primarily demographic variables (e.g., parent education, family structure, child gender and race), but other characteristics, particularly household resources (e.g., poverty, employment, public assistance) and parent mental health, may be important in that these characteristics are associated with neighborhood residence and children's development.…”

“…Given the growing proportion of the American population living in areas of concentrated poverty (Bishaw, ), understanding the implications of neighborhood disadvantage for children's development is important. Recent research suggests that neighborhood disadvantage, specifically neighborhood poverty, may affect children's readiness for kindergarten entry (Wolf, Magnuson, & Kimbro, ). What is less clear is the persistence of associations between neighborhood disadvantage and child outcomes into elementary school and whether household and neighborhood resources interact.…”

Civic learning for alienated, disaffected and disadvantaged students: measurement, theory and practice

“…Similarly, disadvantaged students here are defined as those who are from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Most of those students have relatively poor achievement (Avvisati, 2018), have low level of school readiness (Wolf et al, 2017), and are at risk of becoming alienated and disaffected at school. Avvisati (2018, p. 5) proposed that disadvantaged students "often encounter obstacles that prevent them from developing their full potential at school".…”