Young Latinx children: At the intersections of race and socioeconomic status

Abstract

To understand the developmental outcomes of Latinx children growing up poor in the United States, we examine how socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnic minority status jointly condition the development of Latinx children in the United States. To address these gaps, in this chapter we first present a brief demographic profile of Latinx in the United States to contextualize the later theoretical and empirical discussions. We then review theoretical frameworks that explain SES differences in Latinx home environments and examine how they have been used to explain disparities in Latinx children's outcomes. Third, we describe the current research on the early home environments of Latinx children of varying levels of parental SES. Fourth, we review the literature on Latinx children's inequalities noting the scarcity of research that compares Latinx to White children or Latinx to Black children compared to the studies that focus on the White-Black academic gap. Finally, we conclude by summarizing state of knowledge and offering suggestions for future directions. We focus on young children (0-8) due to space limitations but also because the early childhood period is foundational to later development and is where the effects of poverty most likely to have enduring effects.