How Does Household Income Affect Child Personality Traits and Behaviors?

Akee, Randall; Copeland, William E.; Costello, E. Jane; Simeonova, Emilia

doi:10.1257/aer.20160133

Cited by 138 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…Our monitoring component shares elements of the parental monitoring index developed by Small and Kerns (1993) and has similarities with Baumrind's (1973) parental control dimension of parenting style. Closely-related constructs have also been identified in the recent literature in economics (Ermisch, 2008;Fiorini & Keane, 2014;Akee et al 2015). …”

Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 93%

Parenting style as an investment in human development

2018

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We take a new look at the role of parenting style and poverty in human development by conceptualizing parenting style as an investment that parents make in the development of their children. Unlike previous researchers, we capture the idea that the investments parents make in their children -including in parenting style -are not only costly in terms of the parents' time and money, but they are also demanding in terms of parents' attention. Thus, parents whose attention is diverted by other things will be less able to invest in their children and adolescents (e.g. to help them with school work, to read to them, to provide a good diet, to monitor their activities, etc.). Finally, we also consider the idea that poverty itself limits parent's attention.We see whether our conceptualization of parenting style, poverty, and child development is likely to be correct by looking at the relationship between parents' parenting style and the development and outcomes of their 18 year old children, captured in the Youth in Focus (YIF) Data. These data combine detailed Centrelink records with extensive survey information from both young people and their parents. We find broad support for our conceptualization of parenting style. In our data we can clearly disentangle parenting style from other more commonly researched aspects of parenting, such as the time and money parents invest in their children. Moreover, parenting style is related to poverty. In particular, poorer parents tend to monitor their young-adult children less than richer parents, even amongst parents that are comparable in other parental aspects of their investment in their children. Parenting style is also related to the young adults' personality development, their behavior, and their schooling outcomes even after accounting for other parental investments. This paper's main contribution is to formalize the complex relation between parenting, poverty, and children's development. Formally modelling the tradeoffs that parents make in raising their childrenas we have done here -is fundamental in the formation of social policy designed to generate better outcomes for disadvantaged children. Such policies are increasingly being enacted by governments across the world in the form of parenting interventions. Evaluations of parenting interventions, however, typically focus only on specific parenting behaviors (e.g. reading to children; monitoring; health care; helping with homework; providing routine; etc.) without considering their consequences for other parental investments. Understanding these tradeoffs is an essential first step in evaluating the overall impact of policies aimed at changing parents' behavior towards their children. Moreover, to the extent that poverty constrains parents' available attention, income transfers that move families out of poverty will not only increase parents' financial resources, but also permit parents to pay more attention into raising their children. The additional attention and financial resources are both expected to result in bett...

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Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 93%

Parenting style as an investment in human development

2018

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“…There have been a handful of longitudinal studies testing the effect of stress during childhood and social behavior in adulthood using exogenous shocks of positive or negative income shocks on different behavioral outcomes. These studies have shown that higher levels of income tend to make individuals more 'agreeable' and more trustful (Akee et al, 2018;Hörl et al, 2016) while higher levels of violence during childhood make people more antisocial and more violent (Gangadharan et al, 2017;Miguel et al, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most noteworthy pieces of research in this area is a quasi-experimental study led Akee et al (2018). In this study, American Indian children were exposed to a positive income shock following the opening of a casino that decided to allocate part of its revenue to Cherokee households.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In line with this idea, correlational research in humans has shown that early childhood environmental harshness is associated with decreased investment in health and an accelerated reproductive schedule Mell et al, 2018;Nettle, 2011). Causal experiments in non-human animals have also demonstrated that experiencing harshness during the juvenile period has an impact on somatic and reproductive strategies (Reznick & Endler, 1982;Veenema, 2009) and natural experiments in humans have confirmed the causal influence of growing conditions on adult outcomes (Akee et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

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Environmental harshness is associated with lower investment in collective actions

Lettinga

Jacquet

André

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Although humans cooperate universally, there is variability across individuals, times and cultures in the amount of resources people invest in cooperative activities. The origins of such variability are not known but recent work highlights that variations in environmental harshness may play a key role. A growing body of experimental work in evolutionary psychology suggests that humans adapt to their specific environment by calibrating their lifehistory strategy. In this paper, we apply structural equation models to test the association between current and childhood environmental harshness, life-history strategy and adult cooperation in two large-scale datasets (the World Values Survey and the European Values Study). The present study replicates existing research linking a harsher environment (both in adulthood and in childhood) with a modulated reproduction-maintenance trade-off and extends these findings to the domain of collective actions. Specifically, we find that a harsher environment (both in adulthood and in childhood) is associated with decreased involvement in collective action and that this association is mediated by individuals' life-history strategy.

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“…Less is known about the impact of income on children. One study found that an increase in income amongst families in poverty is associated with emotional and behavioral benefits for children [32]. However, because it is often not practical to supplement family income directly, a more tractable goal may be to support parental socioeconomic mobility [33,34].…”

Section: Improving Cognitive Skills: Lessons From Visual Neurosciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Sensory and cognitive plasticity: implications for academic interventions

Cooper

Mackey

2016

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

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Research in neuroscience has great potential for transforming education. However, the brain systems that support academic and cognitive skills are poorly understood in comparison to the systems that support sensory processing. Decades of basic research have examined the role that brain plasticity plays in the genesis and treatment of developmental visual disorders, which may help to inform how cognitive training approaches can be tailored for students who experience environmental disadvantage. In this review, we draw parallels between visual and cognitive intervention approaches, and suggest research avenues that could inform educational practice in the future.

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How Does Household Income Affect Child Personality Traits and Behaviors?

Cited by 138 publications

References 81 publications

Parenting style as an investment in human development

Parenting style as an investment in human development

Environmental harshness is associated with lower investment in collective actions

Sensory and cognitive plasticity: implications for academic interventions

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