Frequent moves have been associated with detriments to children’s achievement and behavioral outcomes with the disruption and stress associated with moving potentially underling these relationships (Adam, 2004). However, a change in residence may also be accompanied by a shift in neighborhood quality. Findings from policy interventions promoting neighborhood mobility have found moves from high-poverty to low-poverty neighborhoods to be linked to benefits in terms of children’s academic performance and behavior problems (e.g. Katz, Kling, Liebman, 2001). While these two areas of research suggest that residential mobility and neighborhood quality may play competing roles in children’s functioning, little work has considered their joint influence. In addition, little is known about how these factors relate to children’s self regulation (e.g., memory, attention, and ability to maintain inhibitory control), which has been shown to play a pivotal role in positive behavior and early learning.

This study addresses this question by considering whether a residential move in early childhood is predictive of children’s dysregulation in 5^th grade and whether the poverty levels of the neighborhood of origin or destination moderate this relationship. Data for this study come from the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), a longitudinal follow-up of a socioemotional intervention trial implemented in Head Start preschool programs. Family addresses reported at four waves spaced beween preschool through 5^th grade were coded to indicate whether families had ever moved and linked with census data to obtain measures of neighborhood poverty. Children’s dysregulation in 5^th grade was measured in two ways: the Hearts and Flowers (H&F) task, a computerized direct assessment designed to capture cognitive dimensions of self-regulatory dysfunction and a teacher-report measure (BIS-BRIEF) assessing both cognitive and behavioral dimensions.

In order to minimize observable selection bias, inverse probability of treatment weighting using propensity scores was employed to reweight movers (n=251) to similar non-movers (n=99) based on a set of baseline demographic, household, and neighborhood covariates. Final estimation models also included children’s baseline levels of self-regulation. Linear regression models with weights revealed having ever moved to be related to higher dysregulation for both outcomes: H&F, b=41.22 (20.84), p=.04; BIS-BRIEF, b=.06 (.03), p=.08). The interaction between residential mobility and neighborhood poverty at baseline was predictive of performance on the H&F, b=-163.62 (85.45), p=.05, with moves out of high poverty neighborhoods being related to decreases in dysregulation and moves out of low poverty neighborhoods related to increases. The interaction between residential mobility and neighborhood poverty at wave four was predictive of BIS-BRIEF scores, b=.22 (.11), p=.04, with moves into high poverty neighborhoods being related to increases in dysregulation.

Given competing evidence on whether residential mobility may be protective or detrimental for children’s outcomes, this work has important implications for policy and intervention. In particular, this research supports the use of policy to encourage residential mobility into low poverty settings while also highlighting the need to support the self-regulatory growth of children whose families are moving into high poverty contexts.  Additional policy implications and sensitivity analyses will be included in the final presentation.