Growing up poor but doing well: Contextual factors that predict academic success.

This paper combines data on family, school, neighborhood, and city contexts with survey data from the Year 9 (n = 2,193) and Year 15 (n = 2, 236) Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to study children in America's inner-cities who are "beating the odds". We identify children as beating the odds if they were born to families of low socio-economic status but scored above the state average in reading, vocabulary and math at age 9, and were academically on-track by age 15. We also examine if the influences of these contexts are developmentally nuanced. We find that living in two parent households where harsh parenting methods are absent (family context) and living in neighborhoods where two parent families predominate (neighborhood context) are protective factors that help children beat the odds. We also find that city-wide contexts of higher levels of religiosity and fewer single parent households contribute to children beating the odds, however, these macro predictors are weaker when compared with family/neighborhood contexts. We find that these contextual effects are indeed developmentally nuanced. We conclude with a discussion of some interventions and policies that could help increase the number of at-risk children who beat the odds.

Differential Developmental Associations of Material Hardship Exposure and Adolescent Amygdala-Prefrontal Cortex White Matter Connectivity.

Accumulating literature has linked poverty to brain structure and function, particularly in affective neural regions; however, few studies have examined associations with structural connections or the importance of developmental timing of exposure. Moreover, prior neuroimaging studies have not used a proximal measure of poverty (i.e., material hardship, which assesses food, housing, and medical insecurity) to capture the lived experience of growing up in harsh economic conditions. The present investigation addressed these gaps collectively by examining the associations between material hardship (ages 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15 years) and white matter connectivity of frontolimbic structures (age 15 years) in a low-income sample. We applied probabilistic tractography to diffusion imaging data collected from 194 adolescents. Results showed that material hardship related to amygdala-prefrontal, but not hippocampus-prefrontal or hippocampus-amygdala, white matter connectivity. Specifically, hardship during middle childhood (ages 5 and 9 years) was associated with greater connectivity between the amygdala and dorsomedial pFC, whereas hardship during adolescence (age 15 years) was related to reduced amygdala-orbitofrontal (OFC) and greater amygdala-subgenual ACC connectivity. Growth curve analyses showed that greater increases of hardship across time were associated with both greater (amygdala-subgenual ACC) and reduced (amygdala-OFC) white matter connectivity. Furthermore, these effects remained above and beyond other types of adversity, and greater hardship and decreased amygdala-OFC connectivity were related to increased anxiety and depressive symptoms. Results demonstrate that the associations between material hardship and white matter connections differ across key prefrontal regions and developmental periods, providing support for potential windows of plasticity for structural circuits that support emotion processing.

Differential associations of parental harshness and parental disengagement with overall cortisol output at 15 years: Implications for adolescent mental health.

Psychosocial stress in childhood and adolescence is linked to stress system dysregulation, although few studies have examined the relative impacts of parental harshness and parental disengagement. This study prospectively tested whether parental harshness and disengagement show differential associations with overall cortisol output in adolescence. Associations between overall cortisol output and adolescent mental health problems were tested concurrently. Adolescents from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) provided hair samples for cortisol assay at 15 years (N = 171). Caregivers reported on parental harshness and disengagement experiences at 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15 years, and adolescents reported at 15 years. Both parent and adolescent reported depressive and anxiety symptoms and antisocial behaviors at 15. Greater parental harshness from 1-15 years, and harshness reported at 15 years in particular, was associated with higher overall cortisol output at 15. Greater parental disengagement from 1-15 years, and disengagement at 1 year specifically, was associated with lower cortisol output. There were no significant associations between cortisol output and depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, or antisocial behaviors. These results suggest that the unique variances of parental harshness and disengagement may have opposing associations with cortisol output at 15 years, with unclear implications for adolescent mental health.

Beyond family-level adversities: Exploring the developmental timing of neighborhood disadvantage effects on the brain.

A growing literature suggests that adversity is associated with later altered brain function, particularly within the corticolimbic system that supports emotion processing and salience detection (e.g., amygdala, prefrontal cortex [PFC]). Although neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage has been shown to predict maladaptive behavioral outcomes, particularly for boys, most of the research linking adversity to corticolimbic function has focused on family-level adversities. Moreover, although animal models and studies of normative brain development suggest that there may be sensitive periods during which adversity exerts stronger effects on corticolimbic development, little prospective evidence exists in humans. Using two low-income samples of boys (n = 167; n = 77), Census-derived neighborhood disadvantage during early childhood, but not adolescence, was uniquely associated with greater amygdala, but not PFC, reactivity to ambiguous neutral faces in adolescence and young adulthood. These associations remained after accounting for several family-level adversities (e.g., low family income, harsh parenting), highlighting the independent and developmentally specific neural effects of the neighborhood context. Furthermore, in both samples, indicators measuring income and poverty status of neighbors were predictive of amygdala function, suggesting that neighborhood economic resources may be critical to brain development.

Government Assistance Protects Low-Income Families from Eviction.

A lack of affordable housing is a pressing issue for many low-income American families and can lead to eviction from their homes. Housing assistance programs to address this problem include public housing and other assistance, including vouchers, through which a government agency offsets the cost of private market housing. This paper assesses whether the receipt of either category of assistance reduces the probability that a family will be evicted from their home in the subsequent six years. Because no randomized trial has assessed these effects, we use observational data and formalize the conditions under which a causal interpretation is warranted. Families living in public housing experience less eviction conditional on pre-treatment variables. We argue that this evidence points toward a causal conclusion that assistance, particularly public housing, protects families from eviction.

Early Puberty and Telomere Length in Preadolescent Girls and Mothers.

OBJECTIVE: To test the association between early puberty and telomere length in preadolescent girls and mothers from a large representative sample of US females. STUDY DESIGN: We analyzed data from 1194 preadolescent girls and 2421 mothers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Participants were from a population-based birth cohort (1998-2000) born in large US cities. Telomere length was assessed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction from saliva samples provided by preadolescent girls and mothers of preadolescent youth. Mothers completed a questionnaire about their child's pubertal development to determine concurrent Tanner stages and provided self-reports of her own age at menarche. Linear regression models were used to estimate the association between pubertal development (status and timing) and telomere length. RESULTS: Early pubertal timing but not pubertal status was associated with shorter telomere length in preadolescent girls (P < .01). Early age at menarche was associated with shorter telomere length in a sample of mothers of preadolescent youth (P < .05). CONCLUSIONS: Results provide evidence for the association between early puberty and shorter telomeres evidenced by associations in both preadolescent girls and mothers. Future research should address the limitations of this study by using longitudinal measurements of pubertal development assessed through medical examinations and repeated assessments of telomere length to capture telomere attrition.

Shared Reading at Age 1 Year and Later Vocabulary: A Gene-Environment Study.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the extent to which associations between shared reading at age 1 years and child vocabulary at age 3 years differ based on the presence of sensitizing alleles in the dopaminergic and serotonergic neurotransmitter systems. STUDY DESIGN: We conducted a secondary analysis of data from a national urban birth cohort using mother reports in conjunction with child assessments and salivary genetic data. Child vocabulary was assessed using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The primary exposure was mother-reported shared reading. We used data on gene variants that may affect the function of the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems. We examined associations between shared reading and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test score using multiple linear regression. We then included interaction terms between shared reading and the presence of sensitizing alleles for each polymorphism to assess potential moderator effects adjusting for multiple comparisons. RESULTS: Of the 1772 children included (56% black, 52% male), 31% of their mothers reported reading with their child daily. Daily shared reading was strongly associated with child Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores in unadjusted (B = 7.9; 95% CI, 4.3-11.4) and adjusted models (B = 5.3; 95% CI, 2.0-8.6). The association differed based on the presence of sensitizing alleles in the dopamine receptor 2 and serotonin transporter genes. CONCLUSIONS: Among urban children, shared reading at age 1 years was associated with greater vocabulary at age 3 years. Although children with sensitizing alleles on the dopamine receptor 2 and serotonin transporter genes were at greater risk when not read to, they fared as well as children without these alleles when shared reading occurred.

Geography of intergenerational mobility and child development.

Recent research by Chetty and colleagues finds that children's chances of upward mobility are affected by the communities in which they grow up [Chetty R, Hendren N (2016) Working paper 23002]. However, the developmental pathways through which communities of origin translate into future economic gain are not well understood. In this paper we examine the association between Chetty and Hendren's county-level measure of intergenerational mobility and children's cognitive and behavioral development. Focusing on children from low-income families, we find that growing up in a county with high upward mobility is associated with fewer externalizing behavioral problems by age 3 years and with substantial gains in cognitive test scores between ages 3 and 9 years. Growing up in a county with 1 SD better intergenerational mobility accounts for ∼20% of the gap in developmental outcomes between children from low- and high-income families. Collectively, our findings suggest that the developmental processes through which residential contexts promote upward mobility begin early in childhood and involve the enrichment of both cognitive and social-emotional development.

Sleep Duration and Telomere Length in Children.

OBJECTIVE: To test the association between sleep duration and telomere length in a pediatric population. STUDY DESIGN: We analyzed cross-sectional data for 1567 children from the age 9 study wave of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a population-based birth cohort of children born between 1998 and 2000 in large American cities (population >200 000). We measured telomere length using quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and children's typical nightly sleep duration was reported by their primary caregivers. Using linear regression, we estimated the association between sleep duration and telomere length both in unadjusted models and adjusting for a number of covariates. RESULTS: We found that children with shorter sleep durations have shorter telomeres than children with longer sleep durations. Each hour less of nightly sleep duration is associated with having telomeres that are 0.015 log-kilobases per chromosome shorter (P < .05). We found no difference in this association by race, sex, or socioeconomic status. CONCLUSIONS: We provide preliminary evidence that children with shorter sleep durations have shorter telomeres. This finding is consistent with a broader literature indicating that suboptimal sleep duration is a risk for increased physiological stress and impaired health. Future research should address the limitations of our study design by using longitudinal study designs and telomere measurements, measuring sleep duration via polysomnography or actigraphy, and assessing the intermediate biological mechanisms of the link between sleep and telomere dynamics.

Social disadvantage, genetic sensitivity, and children's telomere length.

Disadvantaged social environments are associated with adverse health outcomes. This has been attributed, in part, to chronic stress. Telomere length (TL) has been used as a biomarker of chronic stress: TL is shorter in adults in a variety of contexts, including disadvantaged social standing and depression. We use data from 40, 9-y-old boys participating in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to extend this observation to African American children. We report that exposure to disadvantaged environments is associated with reduced TL by age 9 y. We document significant associations between low income, low maternal education, unstable family structure, and harsh parenting and TL. These effects were moderated by genetic variants in serotonergic and dopaminergic pathways. Consistent with the differential susceptibility hypothesis, subjects with the highest genetic sensitivity scores had the shortest TL when exposed to disadvantaged social environments and the longest TL when exposed to advantaged environments.

Maternal Education, Changing Family Circumstances, and Children's Skill Development in the United States and UK.

Among the core dimensions of socioeconomic status, maternal education is the most strongly associated with children's cognitive development, and is a key predictor of other resources within the family that strongly predict children's well-being: economic insecurity, family structure, and maternal depression. Most studies examine these circumstances in isolation of one another and/or at particular points in time, precluding a comprehensive understanding of how the family environment evolves over time and contributes to educational disparities in children's skill development and learning. In addition, very little research examines whether findings observed among children in the United States can be generalized to children of a similar age in other countries. We use latent class analysis and data from two nationally representative birth cohort studies that follow children from birth to age five to examine two questions: 1) how do children's family circumstances evolve throughout early childhood, and 2) to what extent do these trajectories account for the educational gradient in child skill development? Cross-national analysis reveals a good deal of similarity between the U.S. and U.K. in patterns of family life during early childhood, and in the degree to which those patterns contribute to educational inequality in children's skill development.

Intimate Partner Violence in the Great Recession.

In the United States, the Great Recession was marked by severe negative shocks to labor market conditions. In this study, we combine longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study with U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on local area unemployment rates to examine the relationship between adverse labor market conditions and mothers' experiences of abusive behavior between 2001 and 2010. Unemployment and economic hardship at the household level were positively related to abusive behavior. Further, rapid increases in the unemployment rate increased men's controlling behavior toward romantic partners even after we adjust for unemployment and economic distress at the household level. We interpret these findings as demonstrating that the uncertainty and anticipatory anxiety that go along with sudden macroeconomic downturns have negative effects on relationship quality, above and beyond the effects of job loss and material hardship.

The Great Recession, genetic sensitivity, and maternal harsh parenting.

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this study examined the effects of the Great Recession on maternal harsh parenting. We found that changes in macroeconomic conditions, rather than current conditions, affected harsh parenting, that declines in macroeconomic conditions had a stronger impact on harsh parenting than improvements in conditions, and that mothers' responses to adverse economic conditions were moderated by the DRD2 Taq1A genotype. We found no evidence of a moderating effect for two other, less well-studied SNPs from the DRD4 and DAT1 genes.

Variation in child body mass index patterns by race/ethnicity and maternal nativity status in the United States and England.

This paper examines body mass index (BMI) trajectories among children from different race/ethnic and maternal nativity backgrounds in the United States and England from early- to middle-childhood. This study is the first to examine race/ethnic and maternal nativity differences in BMI trajectories in both countries. We use two longitudinal birth cohort studies-The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n = 3,285) for the United States and the Millennium Cohort Study (n = 6,700) for England to estimate trajectories in child BMI by race/ethnicity and maternal nativity status using multilevel growth models. In the United States our sample includes white, black, and Hispanic children; in England the sample includes white, black, and Asian children. We find significant race/ethnic differences in the initial BMI and BMI trajectories of children in both countries, with all non-white groups having significantly steeper BMI growth trajectories than whites. Nativity differences in BMI trajectories vary by race/ethnic group and are only statistically significantly higher for children of foreign-born blacks in England. Disparities in BMI trajectories are pervasive in the United States and England, despite lower overall BMI among English children. Future studies should consider both race/ethnicity and maternal nativity status subgroups when examining disparities in BMI in the United States and England. Differences in BMI are apparent in early childhood, which suggests that interventions targeting pre-school age children may be most effective at stemming childhood disparities in BMI.

Family Structure Transitions and Child Development: Instability, Selection, and Population Heterogeneity.

A growing literature documents the importance of family instability for child wellbeing. In this article, we use longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the impacts of family instability on children's cognitive and socioemotional development in early and middle childhood. We extend existing research in several ways: (1) by distinguishing between the number and types of family structure changes; (2) by accounting for time-varying as well as time-constant confounding; and (3) by assessing racial/ethnic and gender differences in family instability effects. Our results indicate that family instability has a causal effect on children's development, but the effect depends on the type of change, the outcome assessed, and the population examined. Generally speaking, transitions out of a two-parent family are more negative for children's development than transitions into a two-parent family. The effect of family instability is stronger for children's socioemotional development than for their cognitive achievement. For socioemotional development, transitions out of a two-parent family are more negative for white children, whereas transitions into a two-parent family are more negative for Hispanic children. These findings suggest that future research should pay more attention to the type of family structure transition and to population heterogeneity.

The academic consequences of early childhood problem behaviors.

Social/emotional skills in early childhood are associated with education, labor market, and family formation outcomes throughout the life course. One explanation for these associations is that poor social/emotional skills in early childhood interfere with the development of cognitive skills. In this paper, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N=2302) to examine how the timing of social/emotional skills-measured as internalizing, externalizing, and attention problem behaviors in early childhood-is associated with cognitive test scores in middle childhood. Results show that externalizing problems at age 3 and attention problems at age 5, as well as externalizing and attention problems at both ages 3 and 5, are associated with poor cognitive development in middle childhood, net of a wide array of control variables and prior test scores. Surprisingly, maternal engagement at age five does not mediate these associations.

Asian children's verbal development: A comparison of the United States and Australia.

Using longitudinal cohort studies from Australia and the United States, we assess the pervasiveness of the Asian academic advantage by documenting White-Asian differences in verbal development from early to middle childhood. In the United States, Asian children begin school with higher verbal scores than Whites, but their advantage erodes over time. The initial verbal advantage of Asian American children is partly due to their parent's socioeconomic advantage and would have been larger had it not been for their mother's English deficiency. In Australia, Asian children have lower verbal scores than Whites at age 4, but their scores grow a faster rate and converge towards those of Whites by age 8. The initial verbal disadvantage of Asian Australian children is partly due to their mother's English deficiency and would have been larger had it not been for their Asian parent's educational advantage. Asian Australian children's verbal scores grow at a faster pace, in part, because of their parent's educational advantage.

Role of mother's genes and environment in postpartum depression.

Most studies of human molecular genetics and social environment interactions on health have relied heavily on the classic diathesis-stress model that treats genetic variations and environments as being either "risky" or "protective." The biological susceptibility model posits that some individuals have greater genetic reactivity to stress, leading to worse outcomes in poor environments, but better outcomes in rich environments. Using a nontruncated measure of a chronic environmental stressor--socioeconomic status--measured by education, and two polymorphisms (5-HTTLPR and STin2 VNTR) of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTT), we find strong evidence that some women are genetically more reactive to the environment, resulting in a crossover of risks of postpartum depression for the most reactive groups. We discuss how our approach and findings provide a framework for understanding some of the confusion in the gene-environment interaction literature on stress, 5-HTT, and depression.

Genetic differential sensitivity to social environments: implications for research.

Researchers have proposed a genetic differential sensitivity to social environmental (GDSE) model positing that individuals with certain genetic makeups are more sensitive to favorable and unfavorable environmental influences than those without these genetic makeups. We discuss several issues facing researchers who want to use GDSE to examine health: (1) the need for greater theorizing about the social environment to properly understand the size and direction of environmental influences; (2) the potential for combining multiple genetic markers to measure an individual's genetic sensitivity to environmental influence; (3) how this model and exogenous shocks deal with gene-environment correlations; (4) implications of this model for public health and prevention; and (5) how life course and developmental theories may be used to inform GDSE research.

Immigrant-native differences in child health: does maternal education narrow or widen the gap?

Abundant U.S. research documents an "immigrant advantage" in children's physical health. This article extends consideration to the United Kingdom, permitting examination of a broader group of immigrants from disparate regions of the world and different socioeconomic backgrounds. Drawing on birth cohort data (ages 0-5) from both countries (n=4,139 and n=13,381), the analysis considers whether the children of immigrants have a physical and mental health advantage around the beginning of elementary school, and whether advantage is more pronounced among low-educated populations. Findings indicate that the children of immigrants are not uniformly healthier than those in native-born families. Rather, there is heterogeneity in the immigrant advantage across outcomes, and evidence of both greater advantage and disadvantage among children in low-educated immigrant families.