Measuring Economic Disadvantage During Childhood: A Group-Based Modeling Approach

Recent research suggest that child well-being and subsequent status attainment are influenced not only by the overall magnitude of exposure to family economic disadvantage during childhood, but also by the age of exposure and significant changes in family economic circumstances. Unfortunately, traditional measures of children's economic deprivation, such as permanent and transitory income, persistent or cumulative poverty, and the number and length of poverty spells, fail to differentiate between exposure to disadvantage at different stages in childhood and largely ignore how family economic circumstances are changing over time. In this paper, the authors propose a new method for assessing economic disadvantage during childhood that captures both children's overall levels of exposure to economic disadvantage and their patterns of exposure. This new method, which takes advantage of recent advances in finite mixture modeling, uses a longitudinal latent class model to classify children into a limited number of groups with similar histories of exposure to family economic disadvantage. Using this new methodology, group membership can be related to both family background characteristics and achievement in childhood and early adulthood, making it possible both to assess how family characteristics affect patterns of exposure to disadvantage during childhood and directly test alternative theories about the effect of different patterns of exposure on achievement. In this paper, the relationship between background factors, such as race, parental education, and family structure, and group membership is investigated, as is the association between group membership and achievement in early adulthood. The use of this technique is demonstrated using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)

Living at the Edge: American Low-Income Children and Families

By analyzing data from the Current Population Survey March Supplements, Living at the Edge explores the following questions about children in low-income families in the United States: What are the overall changes in the low-income and poverty rates for children over the past quarter century? How has the population of children in low-income families changed over the past decade? Which children are more likely to live in low-income families? How have changes in parental employment status affected the likelihood of children living in low-income families? What are the state by state variations in child low-income and poverty rates, and how have these changed in the last decade? How does a more inclusive definition of family income and expenses affect our understanding of the poverty and near-poverty rates of children in low-income families? This report helps document significant improvements in the child low-income rate as well as the significant decrease in the proportion of children who relied on public assistance during the 1990s. However, Living at the Edge also finds a notable increase in the share of children who lived in near-poor families (those with incomes between 100 and 200 percent of the poverty line) among children in low-income families during the 1990s. Many disadvantaged groups of children, including those with young parents, minority parents, parents with limited education, or unmarried parents, were less likely to live in poor or low-income families in the late 1990s than such children a decade earlier. The improvement in the child low-income rates of these disadvantaged groups was closely related to an increase in parental employment during the late 1990s. However, the low-income rate worsened for children whose more educated parent had a high-school diploma but no college education. For children of many disadvantaged social groups, parental employment appears to do less to protect them from economic hardship then it did a decade earlier. The groups that suffered the most in reduced economic security given parental employment status were those in the medium risk ranks (children in families with at least one parent between ages 25 to 39, children whose more educated parent had only has a high school diploma, and in father-only families). The report also notes that the official measure of poverty ignores the burden of medical and work related expenses as well as taxes and therefore tends to underestimate the share of children in near-poor and low-income families facing economic insecurity. Finally, we discuss the policy implications for our findings

How Belief in a Just World Influences Views of Public Policy

In the policy debates about how best to assist low-income families, societal attitudes toward these families are important. Policies that are viewed favorably by the public are more likely to be implemented whether or not they are the most effective. This report examines some of the ways that public opinion is shaped. The Belief in a Just World—the psychological concept used to describe the belief that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get—influences opinions about how much assistance should be provided to women who have difficulty making ends meet. The National Center for Children in Poverty's innovative Vignette Study tested public opinion toward government assistance by creating a female subject whose description randomly varied 11 characteristics, including whether she works or receives welfare, whether she attends school, whether she is looking for a job, and whether she sometimes skips a meal so that her family can eat. In all cases, this subject was described as the mother of two children. Respondents with a strong Belief in a Just World find women less deserving the more they act responsibly or make efforts to improve their situation. Respondents with a weak Belief in a Just World find women more deserving the more they make an effort to improve their situation. The results suggest that the belief system is challenged for people with a strong Belief in a Just World when they are presented with women who make efforts to improve their situation but still can't get ahead. In order to protect their belief system, people with a strong Belief in a Just World will devalue and blame the victim. In our sample, respondents had a range of beliefs about a just world, from strong to weak. For organizations such as the National Center for Children in Poverty, whose mission is to promote strategies to prevent child poverty and improve the lives of low-income children and their families, the need to appeal to both belief systems is crucial. Common descriptions of low-income families would increase support for aid from both groups if the threat to the general Belief in a Just World is reduced. Perhaps the best way to do this would be to highlight the systemic problems that lead to persistent economic struggles, rather than to portray the plight of individuals. For more information about how the public responds to specific characteristics of women who face economic struggles mediated by a strong or weak belief in a just world and research citations, please refer to the full text of the report, available to the right

Circumstances Dictate Public Views of Government Assistance

Women who experience significant barriers to employment may be unable to either obtain or retain jobs and may require intensive services to help them overcome their problems and achieve economic self-sufficiency. The National Center for Children in Poverty's innovative Vignette Study tested the opinions of the general public toward governmental assistance by creating a female subject, Lisa, whose description randomly varied 11 characteristics, including her obstacles to employment (physical disability, mental illness, living in an area with high unemployment, and trouble with reliable child care among them) and whether she works or receives welfare. In all cases, she was described as the mother of two children who faces difficulties providing basic necessities for her family

Changing Children's Trajectories of Development: Two-Year Evidence for the Effectiveness of a School-Based Approach to Violence Prevention

Awareness of youth violence has increased in recent years, resulting in more interest in programs that can prevent violent and aggressive behavior. Although overall rates of violence among young people have declined since the mid-1990s, rates of some forms of youth aggression, violence, and crime remain high. National data reveal that, each year, about 15 percent of high school students are involved in a physical fight at school and 8 percent are threatened or injured with a weapon. Urban youth are at particular risk for exposure to violence and victimization. This report describes one of the largest and longest running school-based violence prevention programs in the country—the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP)—and discusses the results of a rigorous evaluation conducted by the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The evaluation provides concrete evidence that early, school-based prevention initiatives such as the RCCP can work and should be included in communities' efforts to prevent violence among children and youth

Nitrogen Pollution: From the Sources to the Sea

A second Science Links project focused on nitrogen pollution. A team of 12 scientists headed by HBRF Trustee Dr. Charles Driscoll and HBRF postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr. David Whitall, assessed the issue in a peer-reviewed article in the journal BioScience, published in April, 2003, and produced the companion report, Nitrogen Pollution: From the Sources to the Sea. Many people don’t realize that human activity has significantly altered the global nitrogen cycle. Through fossil fuel combustion, fertilizer production and use, and wastewater discharge, human activities release nitrogen into the air and water at greater levels than ever before. Though essential to plant growth, nitrogen can damage the environment at excessive levels. As excessive nitrogen moves through the landscape, it affects the ecological health of forests, soils, streams and, ultimately, coastal environments. This phenomenon of “cascading effects” is familiar to ecologists, but warrants better public understanding. The public policy implications of nitrogen pollution are substantial, relating to the U.S. Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act andFarm Bill

NITROGEN POLLUTION: Sources and Consequences in the U.S. Northeast

In the past century, human activity has doubled the global rate at which reactive nitrogen is produced, greatly increasing nitrogen pollution in the environment. This article investigates this phenomenon in the northeastern United States, describing the region\u27s largest sources of nitrogen pollution, the problems it causes, and the policy options that could reduce its production and diminish its effects