Greg J. Duncan

School readiness and later achievement.

Using 6 longitudinal data sets, the authors estimate links between three key elements of school readiness--school-entry academic, attention, and socioemotional skills--and later school reading and math achievement. In an effort to isolate the effects of these school-entry skills, the authors ensured that most of their regression models control for cognitive, attention, and socioemotional skills measured prior to school entry, as well as a host of family background measures. Across all 6 studies, the strongest predictors of later achievement are school-entry math, reading, and attention skills. A meta-analysis of the results shows that early math skills have the greatest predictive power, followed by reading and then attention skills. By contrast, measures of socioemotional behaviors, including internalizing and externalizing problems and social skills, were generally insignificant predictors of later academic performance, even among children with relatively high levels of problem behavior. Patterns of association were similar for boys and girls and for children from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds.

The Effects of Poverty on Children

Although hundreds of studies have documented the association between family poverty and childrens health, achievement, and behavior, few measure the effects of the timing, depth, and duration of poverty on children, and many fail to adjust for other family characteristics (for example, female headship, mothers age, and schooling) that may account for much of the observed correlation between poverty and child outcomes. This article focuses on a recent set of studies that explore the relationship between poverty and child outcomes in depth. By and large, this research supports the conclusion that family income has selective but, in some instances, quite substantial effects on child and adolescent well-being. Family income appears to be more strongly related to childrens ability and achievement than to their emotional outcomes. Children who live in extreme poverty or who live below the poverty line for multiple years appear, all other things being equal, to suffer the worst outcomes. The timing of poverty also seems to be important for certain child outcomes. Children who experience poverty during their preschool and early school years have lower rates of school completion than children and adolescents who experience poverty only in later years. Although more research is needed on the significance of the timing of poverty on child outcomes, findings to date suggest that interventions during early childhood may be most important in reducing povertys impact on children.

Do neighborhoods influence child and adolescent development

The effects of neighborhood characteristics on the development of children and adolescents are estimated, using two data sets, each of which contains information gathered about individual children and the families and neighborhoods in which they reside. There are reasonalby powerful neighborhood effects-particularly effects of the presence of affluent neighbors-on Childhood IQ, teenage births, and school-leaving, even after the differences in the socioeconomic characteristics of families are adjusted for. The study finds that white teenagers benefit more from the presence of affluent neighbors than do black teenagers.

How much does childhood poverty affect the life chances of children

This study examines the impact of the level of income and the timing of economic deprivation in childhood on completed schooling in the US. Data were obtained from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics among a sample of 1323 children born during 1967 and 1973 and 328 sibling pairs. The average level of income increased across childhood. Income at ages 11-15 years was about 40% higher than income at ages 0-5 years. Only 39% of children with family incomes below

Family Poverty, Welfare Reform, and Child Development

15000 in early childhood had incomes that low in adolescence. Almost 50% of siblings had 15-year average incomes that differed by over

Urban Poverty and Juvenile Crime: Evidence from a Randomized Housing-Mobility Experiment

5000. Multivariate analysis reveals that children with family incomes of

Using Sample Survey Weights in Multiple Regression Analyses of Stratified Samples

15000-25000 completed .82 years more schooling had 4.1 times greater odds of completing high school and had an insignificantly lower risk of a nonmarital birth. At the next higher income level children had a half a year higher schooling level than children with income of

The incidence and wage effects of overeducation

15000-25000. A

Neighborhoods, Obesity, and Diabetes — A Randomized Social Experiment

10000 increase to income averaged over the 0-5 years of life for children in low-income families was associated with a .81 year increase in completed schooling and a 2.9 times increase in the odds of finishing high school. These estimated effects were larger than at ages 6-10 years and 11-15 years. Parental income during adolescence was less important in the completion of high school and more important for college decisions. Children with early childhood family incomes of

Optimal Indicators of Socioeconomic Status for Health Research

15000-25000 averaged .66 years more schooling than children in the lowest income group. Stage-specific income from all childhood stages did not strongly predict nonmarital childbearing. High income during adolescence enabled children to enter college but did not predict completion of college. Sibling findings supported the individual-based findings that economic conditions in early childhood particularly among low-income families were key determinants of completed schooling.