Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This study investigates the relationship between poverty dynamics and children’s academic and socioemotional trajectories in immigrant families. Existing research has attested the importance of poverty and income on children’s well-being. However, little is known about the dynamic nature of poverty. Different dimensions of poverty such as the duration (longer vs. shorter spell) or the stability (e.g., increase vs. decrease) may shape children’s well-being differently. This paper examines how the various dimensions of poverty (i.e., duration, stability, and depth) are associated with children’s academic and socioemotional trajectories from kindergarten to eighth grade in immigrant families.

We used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K), a longitudinal dataset comprising a nationally representative cohort of children who entered kindergarten in the fall of 1998 (N=21,260). We used both information on income and family socioeconomic status (SES) which considers parental education, parental occupation, and family income to define poverty using the U.S. federal poverty threshold. Three dimensions of poverty dynamics were examined including depth (i.e., nonpoor, near-poor, or poor), stability (i.e., the direction of changes in income and poverty status; two-year average income percentage change), and duration (i.e., times in poverty since kindergarten). Academic well-being includes reading and math scores from kindergarten to eighth grade. Socioemotional well-being includes both internalizing and externalizing behaviors reported by teachers from kindergarten to fifth grade and by youths from third to eighth grade. A rich set of child, parent, and family characteristics were also considered.

Results from the growth curve analyses indicate that children who were financially disadvantaged (exposed to poverty, unstable income, and chronic poverty) performed worse on their reading and math scores and had worse internalizing and externalizing behaviors at the entry of kindergarten. The academic gaps became larger while the socioemotional gaps were stable over time between the financially advantaged and disadvantaged children. As a whole, children of immigrants had lower math scores but similar reading scores compared to their counterparts. However, children of immigrants who were financially disadvantaged performed significantly worse in their reading and math compared to children of native-borns who were not financially disadvantaged. The poorer they were and the longer they stayed in poverty, the worse their reading and math scores were compared to their counterparts over time. In contrast, children of immigrants had similar, if not better, socioemotional well-being, than their counterparts. It is only the children of immigrants who were poor and for long period of time between kindergarten and eighth grade had significantly worse socioemotional well-being reported by both teachers and themselves.

Our results shed new lights on the complexities of different dimensions of poverty in shaping children’s academic and socioemotional well-being throughout their first nine years of schooling in immigrant families. Our results highlight that children of immigrants were doing as well as, if not better than, children of native-borns, but deep and long-spell poverty could compromise their strength in having an optimal development throughout their first nine years of schooling, a period holds important key to their future success.