Family and neighborhood socioeconomic status and temperament development from childhood to adolescence.

Abstract

Children differ in their temperament and these differences predict consequential outcomes, including mental health, peer relations, substance use, academic performance, and adult personality. Additionally, children's temperament develops over time in response to environmental factors, such as the socioeconomic status (SES) of their family and the neighborhood in which they are raised. However, there has been lack on research on the relation between neighborhood SES and the development of temperament or personality. Using data from two cohorts of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC; N=9,217) that followed children from 4 to 15years old, the present analyses examined whether parent income, parent education, and neighborhood disadvantage were associated with three child temperament traits that are precursors to Five-Factor Model (FFM) adult personality traits. Longitudinal hierarchical linear models (HLM) generally found that children with lower neighborhood SES or family SES tended to have lower sociability, higher reactivity, and lower persistence and these associations did not decrease over time. This research demonstrates that both the neighborhood and the family SES in childhood are important for the development of temperament across childhood and adolescence.