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

Abstract

Neighborhoods provide resources that may affect children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes. However, it is unclear to what degree associations between neighborhood disadvantage and outcomes persist into elementary school and whether neighborhood disadvantage interacts with household disadvantage. Using data from the 2010–2011 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Kindergarten Cohort (N = 15,100 children) merged with census data from the American Community Survey, this study examines associations between neighborhood poverty and children's math, reading, and behavioral outcomes at kindergarten and first and second grades. Findings indicate that as tract‐level poverty increases, children's achievement worsens after controlling for child and family characteristics. These associations persist into second grade and are stronger for children in poor versus nonpoor households. Findings suggest that neighborhood disadvantage may contribute to poorer achievement scores, particularly among children with few household resources, but that household disadvantage and other characteristics largely explain behavioral outcomes. Research and policy implications are discussed.

Center-based early care and education and children’s school readiness: Do impacts vary by neighborhood poverty?

“…Consistent with previous research (Morrissey & Vinopal, 2017; Wolf et al, 2017), we find that neighborhood disadvantage, as measured by the poverty rate, is associated with poorer achievement outcomes in kindergarten. Compared to children in low-poverty neighborhoods (14% or lower poverty rates), those living in moderate-high (20–40% poverty) or high-poverty (more than 40% poverty) neighborhoods scored between one-eleventh to one-seventh of a standard deviation lower in math and reading assessments in the fall of kindergarten.…”

“…Using data from the nationally representative ECLS-K:2011 linked with corresponding contextual data from the U.S. Census’s American Community Survey (ACS), we investigated whether neighborhood poverty moderates associations between center-based ECE participation and measures of children’s school readiness, distinguishing Head Start from other types of center care. We tested interactions between neighborhood poverty and Head Start or other center-based care, and not home-based care, because previous research finds generally stronger effects of Head Start, preschool, and other types of center care for children’s cognitive outcomes, as compared to other types of care (e.g., Bassok et al, 2017; Chaudry et al, 2017; Deming, 2009; Lee et al, 2014; Yoshikawa et al, 2013), and neighborhood effects research finds negative associations between neighborhood poverty and children’s outcomes (e.g., Morrissey & Vinopal, 2017; Wolf et al, 2017); together, the literature suggests that center-based care attendance in poor neighborhoods may be of particular importance in narrowing achievement gaps. We hypothesized a main effect of improved school readiness scores among children who participated in Head Start and other center-based ECE.…”

School Closures and Returning to School: Views of Parents of Children With Disabilities in England During the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…This result highlights the widely recognized role of socioeconomic factors (often intersected with ethnicity) as vectors of psychological vulnerability in face of adversity (e.g. Morrissey and Vinopal, 2018;Taylor et al, 2020), but also underlines the importance of cumulative risk in children and families with SEND who are also from deprived communities. In other words, children with SEND from poorer backgrounds are much more likely to be affected, psychologically, by national lockdowns.…”

The kindergarten Early Development Instrument predicts third grade academic proficiency

“…Although our sample had a large proportion of Latinx children and English Language Learners, it had a notable underrepresentation of African American children. Though the EDI has been validated with racially diverse populations in other countries (e.g., Muhajarine, Puchala, & Janus, 2011), future research in the United States should specifically focus on expanding the examination of predictive validity for African American children. Additionally, the current study did not have individual child level indicators for socio-economic status (e.g., family income, maternal education), thus was limited in terms of controlling for these potential influences.…”