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The Effects of Family and Neighborhood Characteristics on the Behavioral and Cognitive Development of Poor Black Children: A Longitudinal Study
Author(s) -
Jackson Aurora P.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1023/a:1025615427939
Subject(s) - educational attainment , health psychology , psychology , developmental psychology , family income , longitudinal study , cognition , depressive symptoms , public health , medicine , psychiatry , nursing , pathology , economics , economic growth
Using data from an ongoing study of 178 single‐mother, Black families, this study investigates the relations among family resources (mothers' employment, income from employment, and educational attainment), maternal depressive symptoms, neighborhood quality in the preschool years and over time, and child developmental outcomes (behavior problems, broad reading, calculation) in the early school years. Results indicate that behavior problems in school‐age children were associated with behavior problems early on, the child's gender, the mother's depressive symptoms and, to some extent, her employment status. However, these findings were conditioned by the mother's educational attainment and her evaluation of neighborhood problems early on. Better broad reading scores were associated with higher maternal educational attainment, especially for school‐age girls of employed mothers, whereas higher calculation scores were predicted by fewer school‐age behavior problems and, in the presence of higher neighborhood problems in the preschool years, mothers' higher educational attainment.